A Reservation Site Faces a More Crowded Table
OpenTable's stock price sinks as competitors eye its market
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A.J. Gilbert, the owner of San Francisco restaurant Luna Park, began using OpenTable in 2003 to let customers book reservations online. He says the site is now responsible for about 80 percent of reservations, but it comes at a price: In October his OpenTable tab ran to $2,351. “The market is ready for some price competition,” he says. “OpenTable has kind of stumbled into this monopoly. They support their product really well. They’re just really expensive.”
OpenTable dominates the market for online reservations in the U.S., with more than 16,000 restaurant subscribers. They pay commissions of 25¢ to $1 on reservations and a monthly fee for software to manage table bookings and customer profiles.