A third of diners admit to being no-shows in restaurants
A study by the online booking platform found young adults were the most likely to no-show, with a quarter of 16-24-year-olds admitting to regularly failing to turn up for their reservation.
Some 40% of Londoners questioned say they have no-showed at least once, compared to 39% of respondents in Manchester and 38.7% in Leeds.
The findings were based on a study of 2,060 people over the age of 16 in Britain in January 2018.
OpenTable has launched its Book Responsibly campaign in the UK off the back of the research, in a bid to raise awareness of the impact not turning up has on a restaurant.
Adrian Valeriano, OpenTable’s vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says the company also wants to challenge the “perception” that online reservations contribute to no-shows.
The company’s research found booking online or over the phone resulted in similar numbers of diners not turning up. Some 4.4% of online bookings made through OpenTable ended up as no-shows, compared to 4.6% of phone reservations.
“There’s a lot of articles and misinformation out there,” says Valeriano. “As an operator in this space it is responsible of us to say we have services to tackle no-shows.”
He added that he many diners using OpenTable were aware there were consequences for not turning up.
“Our policy is four strikes [no-shows] and you’re out in a 12 month period,” says Valeriano.
“Restaurants have told us anecdotally that they do get calls from diners trying to explain the situation because they don’t want the restaurant to tell us they no-showed.”
