Hotels that want to earn more bookings for their restaurants have a number of options – but they might be missing out on the most obvious.

One of the best solutions is to embrace a modern restaurant booking system which provides a great online reservation tool for guests and makes managing the entire operation much easier for staff.

Here’s a handful of brilliant reasons why your hotel should adopt a restaurant booking system:

Pure convenience

Running a restaurant within a hotel involves a lot of admin – especially if you’re taking bookings for tables in an old-fashioned, analogue format via a massive paper-based diary.

Shifting to a cloud-powered booking platform will make booking management so much easier and enable you to overcome the limitations of paper records.

You’ll also be able to track bookings made via other means (i.e. telephone and walk-in), and in turn gain an invaluable bird’s eye view of the customer journey.

A restaurant booking system will ensure that you don’t disappoint customers who call direct or arrive in person looking for a table by providing staff with an intuitive, immediate booking process.

Access to extra marketing data

Even with ‘GDPR day’ now a distant memory, restaurant owners who did their homework on compliance can still harvest information about customers to improve their promotional strategies.

With a restaurant booking system in place, your hotel will be able to collect personal details from a wider range of guests and then take advantage of this data to boost room bookings and repeat visits. After all, if someone enjoys a meal in your restaurant, why wouldn’t they want to book a hotel room in the future to sample that element of your business?

Encourage direct booking

Paying commission to third party booking platforms will eat into your bottom line if you don’t have a clear direct booking strategy and the system to support it.

That’s where a restaurant booking system comes into its own, because you don’t need to worry about commission and can take direct bookings easily via your own website without paying through the nose for the privilege.

Look for a system that offers seamless integration with your existing website and an easy-to-use guest booking widget.

Cross-device compatibility

Modern guests expect to be able to browse hotel and restaurant websites from their smartphones and tablets – no matter the screen size. Make them pinch, zoom and squint to view the content, and they’ll quickly head to the competition.

The latest restaurant booking systems are fully compatible with mobile devices, and enable bookings to be made from anywhere.

This will enhance conversion rates, convince customers to come back to your site again and start their journey to your restaurant’s doors in the best way possible.

Restaurant brand-building

If your restaurant is branded separately to the hotel, a dedicated table booking solution will help you further develop and preserve its independence.

By showcasing the branding of your restaurant with a direct booking option on your website, you’ll make a real difference to how your hotel’s eatery is perceived; it’ll be a desirable destination in its own right rather than a basic, additional option for overnight accommodation.

Wrapping up

Modern tools make the job of running a hotel and restaurant in unison so much easier; you just need to embrace the best tech to see what a difference it can make.

There’s simply no point overlooking restaurant booking systems for your hotel when they could be the ideal asset to attract new customers and ultimately increase your occupancy rates.