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Priceline To Buy OpenTable For $2.6 Billion
An anonymous reader sends this news from Bloomberg:
Priceline Group Inc. stepped up its acquisition spree by buying OpenTable Inc. in a deal valued at $2.6 billion, adding restaurant bookings to an online travel business already spanning flights, hotels and cars. The all-cash offer of $103 per share for the popular Internet restaurant reservation company is 46 percent higher than OpenTable's closing price yesterday. The deal is expected to be completed in the third quarter, the companies said in a statement today. Priceline is buying a company that seats over 15 million diners per month across more than 31,000 restaurants via online bookings.
William Shatner handled the negotiations.
At this point, I think it's safe to say that we're in another tech bubble. But at least we can have fun seeing which bubble bursts first (HFT, medical, student loan, or tech).
Too bad restaurants are soon to be obsolete with 3D printing!
Having worked in food service as a manager and a cook, Opentable has a rather guest/customer oriented understanding of how restaraunts and reservations actually work. As a restaraunt you can really only count on a reservation during 2 major holidays: valentines day and new years eve. Even then, about 20% will completely skip out on their reservation for any number of uncontrollable factors (i once had a rain storm that wiped out 3 hours of reserved dining.) Its irritating but sometimes you make out OK by backfilling walkins, but the trick is to not be given the scarlet letter of 'reservations only.'
most restaraunts avoid becoming too reliant on reservations, as there is an unspoken 1:8 rule that says for every person you turn away they remind 8 of their friends (including yelp) that you "only take reservations." Also once a restaraunt hits that fabled 1 year mark, reservations and foot traffic diminish reather precipitously. Pretty soon that 'opentbl' button on the PoS becomes the most unused thing on there. Its also worth mentioning that if you dont have opentable+pos then the manager or server at the lead PoS station is charged with ensuring that reservation is hand-marked, so theyll need email and need to be told to check it every 15 minutes (PoS slaves do not have applications.) Any server that gets busy during peak 'reservation time' and forgets to check now has to deal with customers screaming 'something something fucking opentable!' I have to hand it to restaraunts that flat-out refuse to handle reservations as well because apps like opentable have taken dining spots once frequented by locals and restricted them to foursquare clutching townies and business travelers for the majority of the week.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The last dotcom bubble left us with huge amounts of equipment, dark fiber and Aeron chairs. I wonder what we're going to get out of this one?
It's a shame to see it happening again, but I guess I'll just sit back and watch like I did last time. I still wonder why I don't jump in and make my millions at the right time during these bubbles, but whatever....
Uber, Lyft, WhatsApp, Twitter and now OpenTable are going to be the next pets.com, boo.com and webvan.com.
You clearly have no clue what OpenTable is and what it solves.
It's a seating and reservation management platform - an essential need for the vast majority of non-casual restaurants. It's implemented as a hardware/software solution that they install on premise, so it works without a network connection.
In urban markets, they are pretty much a de facto standard, despite being expensive and archaic. Their website and mobile apps drive so many reservations that restaurant managers are more than willing to pay the hefty fees. Those consist of an installation fee (hundreds $), monthly maintenance fee (hundreds $), and per-reservation fee ($1 - $10 per PERSON).
As a technologist working in the restaurant industry, I really dislike them because both their consumer and front of house software sucks so much. That said, they're a real business, with real revenue, solving real problems, for real customers. So yeah, go make a "website for hipsters" and wait for your $2.6bn payout, since it's so easy.
It sounds like you're trying to ask a rhetorical question... But it comes across as "Shit, maybe I should make some money!". Why yes...yes you should.
Not exploring a city and relying on anonymous reviews to plan your entire experience sounds really fun.