How to Build a Hotel Table Booking App Solution for Your Customers from Scratch

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Managing your restaurant operations can be tedious. You must ensure there is a seamless interaction between the people waiting tables and those handling the orders. With more restaurants managing online operations along with offline, it becomes important to handle the two effectively. When your internal management is seamless, it impacts the customer experience positively. 

Investing in a restaurant table booking app is profitable for the owners. You can partner with an expert mobile app development company to make your app idea a reality. With the growing competition in the hospitality and hotel management domain, having an app managing all the operations can give you an edge. 

Let’s take you through a few factors you should consider when developing the restaurant table booking application. 

Read More: Food Delivery App Solution

5 Benefits of Table Booking Application

If you are contemplating integrating a hotel table booking app or building one from the scratch, these benefits can help you decide. 

#1 Clutter-free Order Taking

Earlier, there were notebooks and several papers that handled the orders for the restaurant. This can lead to clutter given the fact that several people place orders online and via phones. You might want to switch to a more effective technology such as an app solution that can take and manage the orders seamlessly, thus making the whole process organized

#2 Accurate Order Management

When you take orders offline or via phone, you might switch orders. There is a possibility, you might make mistakes while delivering them. With an order booking and management software solution, you can easily identify who placed the order. It makes order-taking and delivering easy and seamless. Even small factors such as allergies, food instructions, and other details are noted carefully, thus making your orders more accurate

#3 Better Wait Time Management

With a hotel table booking application, the restaurant manager knows how long it will take to complete a table’s order. They would know when the tables would be available for the next order. Simultaneously, they would know when a particular food order is likely to be delivered. They can predict the wait times for both online and offline orders. 

#4 Automate the Reminders

When your customer has booked a table at your hotel, there is a chance they might forget about it. With automated reminders, you can tell them the table has been booked a few hours before their visit. This would ensure the guest shows up. As a result, you can reduce the no-shows and ensure you don’t lose out on customer revenues. 

#5 Better Customer Insights

You have a detailed profile of repeat customers. At the same time, the application would know what items are ordered, which customers are regular and which ones haven’t visited in a while. It will help you plan your email marketing campaigns, and ensure repeat visits. You can even improve the marketing strategies, enhance the engagement abilities of your business, and enhance customer service experiences. 

The Top 5 Restaurant Table Booking Applications

Several restaurants and hotels have adopted the top restaurant table booking applications that have made order management seamless. Here we will walk you through these apps. 

1. OpenTable

The app was designed to help you detail shift summaries and automate reservation reminders. Your customer can check wait times, book a reservation and ensure reduced wait times. At your end, you can handle orders accurately and improve the personalized services to enhance experiences

Features

• Know the exact number of free tables and people you can fill in.
• Book reservations without paying any reservation fee and reduce wait time.
• Send out automated reminders to reduce no shows.
• Plan the shifts for better resource management and work allocation.

2. Eat App

This is a cross-platform restaurant reservation system that offers services including table management system, database management and CRM solutions. You can improve overall revenue generation and enhance profits with this application.

Features

• Manage party sizes and restaurant availability with the application.
• Take online reservations and manage orders easily .
• Manage and plan the shifts efficiently to enhance the experience and reduce no shows.
• Extensive integration possibilities. 

3. Table In

This is the best-fit restaurant management software solution for small and medium-sized restaurants. It helps them with planning restaurant management, handling customers, and improving the methods to attract more customers. 

Features

• Tells the customer exactly how many hotel tables are available for reservation.
• The manager knows when the restaurant is available for events. .
• Completely streamlined end-to-end reservation and order management.

4. Tock

This is an incredible restaurant management application that aims to help restaurants plan resource allocation, improve marketing, reduce no-shows and improve wait times for better retention. 

Features

• Send automated reminders to ensure customers show up or fill in the cancellations.
• Get insights that can help you improve customer retention strategies.
• Complete guest management system with detailed profiles for better insights.
• Detailed reporting for better management.

5. Wisely

This app was created to handle both the marketing and operations side of restaurant management. It helps handle everything from reservations to wait time. You can also use it to customize the floor plan. 

Features

• Get insights into your customer’s requirements and plan your strategies accordingly.
• PoS Integration and other tools for detailed accounts and better insights.
• Better table and resource allocation.

Read More: Food Delivery Mobile App Development - Cost, Time & Features

7 Must Have Features for your Restaurant Booking Application

When you are planning your restaurant table booking application, there are several things to consider. The must-have features top the list. Here we have included all the top features you should have in your application. 

1. Shift Planning

When you run a restaurant, there are several people on your payroll. This includes order takers, people who wait tables, the chefs and junior assistants. You need to ensure that a particular shift has a decent number of resources to manage the customers. 

For example, during peak hours you need to double the hands on the table. The shift planning feature will help you realize how many people you have, and who will be available when and plan the shifts accordingly. This way you will never fall short of resources.

2. Reservations Management

When a customer sets out to book a hotel table, they need to know how many tables are available, the floor plan and the time for the reservation. The app will show everything to the user, and they can easily book the table.

Having this feature will help the customer make the choice. You will know when the tables will be available and when they are booked. This will help manage the tables and reservations in the hotel efficiently. As a result, you can increase guest experiences. 

3. Automated Messages

You can plan your email marketing and automate the messages you wish to send with this feature. It can help you send out reminders to the people who have booked their tables a few hours before they are due to arrive. This can reduce no-shows. In real time, you can nurture people likely to leave or who have just shown up once to increase retention. 

4. Detailed Reporting and Insights

You should know everything from the PoS about the customers and how they interact with the restaurant. Know their favorite dishes, how much they spend and how often they come. With detailed reports and insights, you can plan your marketing, improve the personalization at the restaurant, and increase their experience. 

5. Pre-Ordering

Allow the customers who have reserved tables at your restaurant to place pre-orders. Offer them space to mention special instructions for food handling and serving. 

This feature can save time at the restaurant, allow them to get what they want and ensure better order management. In the post-covid scenario, having pre-ordering and pre-payments or pre paid can help improve contactless serving and enhance restaurant experiences. 

6. Integrations

You should allow multiple integrations with your restaurant table booking application. For instance, it should integrate with Facebook, Instagram and others for registration. You should enable integration with POs and other internal software for seamless interactions. Data transfer and better operation handling are a result of suitable integrations.

7. Rewards Program

It is one of the finest marketing strategies and should be part of your table booking application. It can improve the total number of customers coming to your restaurant and improve the revenue. Understand your customers to plan the restaurant table booking application. 

The 6 Key Factors to Consider When Planning Table Booking Application

Once you have planned the features you wish to include in your table booking application, you need to think of certain important aspects that can help you plan better. Here we will take you through the top six factors that you cannot ignore. 

#1 The Target Market

You begin by researching your target audience to build the application. You should know who will be using the app and how they use mobile applications in general. 

Are they extensive mobile users? Do they use it for specific purposes? Are they app lovers? Do they have an app for everything on their phone?

These aspects need to be considered when you are planning a mobile application. If they are extensive app users, they would have an incredible learning curve, and can intuitively figure out any type of app. however, if they are limited app users, you might experience some friction in their learning curve. 

Planning the features and app interface is easier for someone who has a learning curve. By reading about your target market, you will also know if they are prone to use iOS or Android. 

#2 Tech Stack

Depending on who your audience is you can plan the tech stack for your mobile application. If they are more likely to use iPhones or iPads, you need an iOS-only app. if you have people from multiple platforms ready to use your hotel table booking application, you must develop a cross-platform mobile application. 

If you are planning the iOS-only app, you need to think if you want to develop using Swift or other technologies. You can select the tools accordingly. 
Similarly, you must choose frameworks from React Native and Flutter to plan your tech stack for cross-platform app development. 

#3 Development Company

If you are a restaurant or hotel, mobile app development may not be your forte. Recruiting and managing your resources for development in-house can be cumbersome and cost-ineffective. It is easier to outsource app development and ensure smooth development. 

Choose a partner that has extensive experience in table booking app development. They can help you plan the tech stack, manage the development and ensure smooth development. It would help if you considered their expertise, skillset, and other abilities before you choose the company. 

#4 Customization

There are several ready-to-use apps available that you can tweak to meet your requirements. However, in some cases, you might want to customize the app to suit your specific needs. Make sure you are aware of the specific changes and customizations you want to introduce in your application. 

#5 Budget

Before you begin developing the mobile app, you should have your work scope and requirement list in hand. Based on these factors, you should define a budget that can help you manage the cost of development. You can research the market, connect with a few vendors, talk to consultants and then estimate the budget. This budget will help you plan your release phases and choose the ideal company to support your development.

#6 Structure of the Team

When you are planning app development, the overall structure of the team is important for smooth communication and effective planning. For example, if you have a project manager or team lead helming the project, it becomes easier to communicate your requirements and manage the development. 

Cost and Timeline for Table Booking App in 2023

The approximate cost of hotel table booking app development is $100000. As the features increase, the cost of development increases. 

App Development	Frontend Development	Backend Development
Core Features for Customer+Restaurant Development	1294 hours	406 hours
Development for Admin Panel	106 hours	114 hours
Total Hours	1400 hours	520 hours

The total hours taken to develop the app is approximately 1920 hours. If we consider $50 per hour, the cost would be around $96k.

This is the cost of building a basic mobile application for restaurant table booking. 

Conclusion

Table booking apps are used to improve wait times and reduce the number of no-shows for restaurants. It can help manage operations seamlessly and enhance customer experiences. With the ideal solution, the restaurants can improve their profits and reduce the churn rate too.

If you are looking for a suitable mobile application for your restaurant requirements, you can connect with us at New York Mobile Tech with your requirements. We will plan your table booking application and offer viable MVP and mobile app solutions that can increase conversions and improve profits.