The restaurant reservation systems have evolved over the traditional call-ahead systems and are flourishing like wild-fire because of the incorporation of advanced technology particularly the internet. However, the restaurant reservation system has numerous advantages as well as disadvantages or drawbacks. The restaurants which have resources and potentialities such as located on tourists’ places like overlooking the ocean such as Barbados restaurants on the beach, or at the shore of a lake, or even in the cities that have places of heritage importance etc. may have more advantages than drawbacks from reservation systems, but for the rest of the restaurants, disadvantages of reservation systems are crucial.

Some of the crucial common disadvantages of restaurant reservation systems are possibilities of losing potential walk-in customers, over-booking of reservations and significantly, the risk of loss caused by no-shows. The risk of no-shows is usually caused by customers who make reservations but never show up. There may be reasons why the no-show customers do not turn up, but it eventually drags the restaurants to heavy loss in terms of expenditure as well as the loss of walk-in customers.

The restaurants which promote the reservation must be well aware of the issues of no-shows and be prepared with adequate measures to prevent as well as manage with the loss of no-show incidents. In order to do this, the restaurants must follow a few procedures such as confirmation in writing, making follow up calls, facilitate easy cancellation procedures, and create a very clear policy on cancellation as well as no-show incidents.

The entire processes and procedures of restaurant procedures particularly the confirmation of booking should be kept in writing in order tackle with the no-show incident. The online reservation systems such as Open Table, Freebokkings, Urbanspoon’sRezbook, CityEats etc. should be communicated through written communications about the confirmation with all the details. In addition to this, the restaurant management must communicate the confirmation through phone call and remind them constantly about their reservation.

One of the appropriate step to reduce the burden of a no-show is to make the process and procedures of cancellation easier and simple. Most customers who wish to cancel the reservation either find it awkward or afraid of communicating the message or do not do it because of complications in the cancellation procedures. If you do the cancellation procedures easy and simple, there may be possibilities that the customers cancel the reservation resulting in no-loss or reduced loss of the restaurants.

Clare Louise