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Hospitality Leadership Through Learning
Faculty & Research

How Restaurant Customers View Online Reservations

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Vol 9 No 5
By: Sheryl E. Kimes Ph.D.

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Executive Summary: Restaurant customers appreciate the convenience of being able to make restaurant reservations online, but they also like the personal touch of telephone reservations. A study of 696 restaurant customers found that nearly one-third had made an online reservation. Those who made reservations online tended to be younger than those who did not, and online users also ate out more frequently. Those who made online reservations considered those reservations to be significantly more convenient than telephone reservations, and the online users also thought that websites gave more information about a restaurant than what they learned by calling on the telephone. At the same time, those online users felt that they had a better personal connection with the restaurant when they made telephone reservations. This tradeoff between efficiency and service perceptions points to a strategy of offering reservations via both methods. Emphasizing the convenience of online reservations may encourage customers to use the website, and that will give restaurant operators more information about their customers. Whether a restaurant uses a third-party reservation service or builds its own website, one key to ensuring a successful reservations process is to make the electronic process as straightforward as possible.

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Comments

I thought your article was fantastic and "hit-the-nail" on the head.
This is a matter very close to my heart at the moment and is a focus for Marriott in the UK.

Edward Harvey
Director of Food & Beverage Development and Design, Food & Beverage
Marriott Hotels Ltd

I greatly appreciate your research findings and think of them as a fountain of free knowledge, that refreshes the limitations of one’s own perception and reach into the community. I am in particular amazed by the very timely study on restaurant on-line reservations. Thanks for the great work!
Sincerely,
 
Bernd H Schwentick                                                              
Managing Partner
OneSolution Restaurant POS Service by
OrderPoint Technologies, LLC

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About Sheryl E. Kimes Ph.D.

Dr. Sheryl E. Kimes is a professor of operations management at the School of Hotel Administration. From 2005–2006, she served as interim dean of the Hotel School and from 2001-2005, she served as the school’s director of graduate studies. Kimes teaches restaurant revenue management, yield management and food and beverage management. She has been named the school’s graduate teacher of the year three times. Her research interests include revenue management and forecasting in the restaurant, hotel and golf industries. She has published over 50 articles in leading journals such as Interfaces, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Service Research, Decision Sciences, and the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. She has served as a consultant to many hospitality enterprises around the world, including Chevy’s FreshMex Restaurants, Walt Disney World Resorts, Ruby’s Diners, Starwood Asia-Pacific and Troon Golf. Kimes earned her doctorate in Operations Management in 1987 from the University of Texas at Austin.

For more information visit http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/facultybios/faculty.html?id=43