Blog / October 9, 2018
Google Reservations: Everything You Need to Know
Elise Musumano
Most guests today google reservations to book tables at restaurants, and they want to book them fast. Google recognized this, which is why they built out their Reserve with Google feature. What It Looks Like: A “Find A Table” button that reservation-seekers see when searching for your restaurant from Google Search or Maps.
The button pulls up your restaurant’s upcoming seating inventory when clicked, lets a guest reserve a different date, time, and party size. And then, it lets them reserve right on Google.
If you use a restaurant reservation or booking platform that charges cover fees to capture these guests, you’re paying for guests who were searching for you organically. And you’re likely not being passed all of the data that your restaurant guests plug into their Google reservation.
Guests want the ability to book from search, and Google just gave it to them.
What It Requires: 1.) A Google Business Listing (very easy), and 2.) your restaurant’s reservation management system to be integrated. Your Google Business Listing pulls in your restaurant’s hours of operation, address, phone number, and menu and reservation links, to assist easier booking. If you don’t have a booking listing yet, you can create one in under 5 minutes or claim one that Google already made for you. Here’s how. The second piece to this is your restaurant reservation system. The platform that you use to manage your restaurant’s online reservations must have an active partnership for a Google integration. If you’re a SevenRooms customer: you automatically get a “Find A Table” button right within your business listing. Not only that, but there are no cover fees and you own all of the data. Here’s what the “Find A Table” button to reserve looks like in real life, when a guest searches for Fire & Vine‘s El Gaucho restaurant in Seattle:
And this is what availability looks like to the guest, once they reserve via the “Find A Table” button —
Once they choose a time slot for their reservation, they are brought to this screen where they enter their details (email address is automatically pulled from their Google login):
Pretty cool, right? SevenRooms clients can learn more here.
Not using SevenRooms at your restaurant yet?
