Nov 29, 2007 7:17 pm US/Pacific
New Web Site Allows Diners To Scalp Reservations
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―
Bjorn Kock is general manager of Town Hall restaurant in San Francisco, a busy place even at lunch time.
That's why accurate reservations are key for him.
"An empty table at the end of the day is lost revenue for us," Kock said.
Enter TablePronto.com, where people who at the last minute can't make their dinner reservation, can now sell that reservation.
Here's how it works: Select your city - San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles - and you'll see a list of reservations for sale in the coming days.
When we checked at noon Thursday, there were only four reservations for sale, each for $10.
When we cross checked with OpenTable.com, a free reservation website, none of the times listed on TablePronto.com was available.
So in theory, it's a win-win: the restaurant gets its table filled, someone who really wants the reservation gets to go and the original person who made the reservation makes a few bucks.
But, "you also open the door for people that make reservations, not with the intention of dining in that restaurant but with the intention of selling it and making money," Kock said. And that can lead to problems. Because the restaurant doesn't know who's really coming to dine, it can't call to confirm the reservation.
"We've already had a couple of reservations through TablePronto where we knew that reservation was made with the intention to sell it," Kock said. "It was a phony phone number on there, 555, all zeros."
But the people who run TablePronto.com say they crack down on reservation abusers.
And besides, they say no one person can post more than three reservations for sale at a time, and no more than three reservations from any one restaurant can appear on the website at a time.
Plus, they believe making $10 to $20 selling a reservation isn't enough of a draw for people who want to abuse the system.
"There's not enough incentive for somebody to try to make a living out of this," said Tablepronto.com founder Antoine Powell.
The head of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association said this is a bad idea because someone will end up making a bunch of reservations to sell, and when they aren't sold, the restaurants would get stuck with empty tables.
He predicted restaurants may have to begin asking for credit cards to hold reservations, if it gets too widespread.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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