Connected Travelers Get a Side Order of Restaurant Reservations

San Francisco-based hospitality industry reservation platform OpenTable is taking its offerings global, looking to offer dining experiences that extend beyond booking tables at local restaurants.

The Booking Holdings subsidiary announced Tuesday (June 22) that it has made a strategic partnership with Inline, a software provider offering a suite of tools including online reservation booking and table management to eateries in East Asia.

“Inline has quickly built a leadership position in select markets in Asia and is growing throughout the region,” OpenTable CEO Debby Soo said in a press release. “We’re delighted to partner with them as we expand OpenTable’s presence in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The partnership offers access to reservations and ordering at restaurants in the area to OpenTable users and provides Inline’s restaurant customers with a way of reaching this user base. Additionally, as part of the partnership, Booking has invested in Inline via OpenTable.

“Working with OpenTable is a wonderful opportunity to help restaurants across the Asia-Pacific region,” Doris Yu, founder and co-CEO of Inline, said in a statement. “We’ve helped restaurant operators serve and maintain relationships with over 200 million diners, and this partnership and vote of confidence will allow us to achieve our goal of serving the busiest and best restaurants from Tokyo to Melbourne.”

The move is the first such announcement — one that suggests a broadening of the company’s vision of its future — from OpenTable since before the pandemic. Now, with this move, it appears that the software company is leveraging its position as part of the Booking portfolio to tap into consumers’ travel routines.

In fact, between the reservation platform, Booking’s trip-planning and flight-purchasing tools, and its hotel marketplace offerings, the company has the opportunity to offer a fully connected experience. For instance, if someone booked a flight to Shanghai via Kayak, the travel search engine could recommend restaurants in the area for consumers to check out on their trip.

A significant share of consumers are looking for technology to improve their dining experiences, though full-service restaurant (FSR) customers are less likely to seek out these digital upgrades.

Research from the May/June edition of PYMNTS’ and Paytronix’s Digital Divide series, The Digital Divide: Technology, The Metaverse And The Future Of Dining Out, which drew from an April survey of nearly 2,500 U.S. adults who regularly purchase food from restaurants, found that 58% of grab-and-go consumers report believing that more technology inside restaurants leads to better customer service. However, only 29% of dine-in customers said the same.

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Additionally, according to PYMNTS data, the share of consumers using digital tools to complete at least some part of their travel journeys is on the rise.

Findings from the May edition of PYMNTS’ ConnectedEconomy Monthly Report, which drew from a survey of more than 2,600 U.S. consumers, showed that the share of consumers who went online to perform an activity related to either travel or transportation has been rising each month for the past several months. The portion rose from 26% in February to 29% in March to 33% in April.

Read more: 19M More Consumers Went Online to Bank, Buy and Pay Bills in May 2022