Urbanspoon has released a new version of Rezbook, filling in gaps in their online reservation and table management system. These changes are not going to cause the ripples that accompanied the launch of Rezbook in 2010, but refine the original software.
Rezbook altered the dynamics in online restaurant reservation even though it has not yet wrestled business away from Opentable at a threatening speed. After Rezbook’s arrival, Opentable, anticipating more competition, changed their pricing and made other concessions to restaurant owners.
Rezbook runs on the iPad, giving restaurants more simplicity and mobility in online reservation. Rezbook is as intuitive as Apple products, so it was an impressive debut. For Urbanspoon, it still is an uphill climb against Opentable, but it is better for the industry and restaurant owners.
I will give a rough summary of what the changes are, but anyone who is interested in Rezbook or uses the software should watch the webinars on the upgrade. There are two: next Tuesday March 27th at 1pm EST, 10am PST or next Thursday March 29th at 2pm EST, 11am PST.
List of Improvements:
- You are able to restrict access to certain parts of the system, giving the ability to manage what an employee can do or see.
- You have better sorting, organizing and navigating capabilities, exploiting the strong suits of the iPad. This includes the reservations & wait-list comparison and easy tagging of customers.
- You can take orders farther in advance (60 days) and to later hours of night (4am)
- The new version is faster and greater connectivity.