Reservation.Tools: effective reservation management and customer engagement

Mr. Dimitrov, can you tell us a bit more about Reservation.Tools?

- Reservation.Tools is a digital solution that lets venues optimize the work around reservation management, grow their revenue, and build loyal customers. The online platform is suitable for restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotel lobby bars, and even for managing and reporting on beaches. Access is fully online and you can use any device — phone, laptop, desktop, or tablet. The system is effectively a hub where every reservation coming in through the different channels — phone, website, Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, or Google Maps — gets recorded.

The platform has a rich set of features tailored entirely to the needs of the venues we work with, and thanks to that we have clients who manage more than 2000 – 3000 reservations per month with Reservation.Tools. 

You focus not only on seating and reservations, but also on building a relationship with the customer. Which features are connected to that?

- The platform is built both for managing reservations and for connecting with customers. That is a key advantage of ours and what makes us very competitive on the market. A venue's most important asset is its loyal and satisfied customers. The more of them you have, the better the business runs. One of the most fundamental things for end customers is how the staff treats them, together with fast, accurate, and correct service.  And this is exactly where Reservation.Tools can be very helpful, because service starts the moment the reservation is taken. The platform lets you build a customer database with all their contacts, their reservation history, their rating, and any comments from visits recorded by the staff. That guarantees, first of all, very fast entry of the reservation on intake, because the customer's existing data is reused.

On the other hand, thanks to the history stored in the customer's profile, the staff can offer the best possible service based on the guest's preferences.  By preferences we mean things like food allergies, smoking area, and any other personalized requirements, so the customer gets a more personalized experience.

Separately, we have a module for sending emails and SMS related to reservations. Customers appreciate getting confirmation of a successful reservation, a reminder, or a cancellation notice.

Can you point out what other advantages the Reservation.Tools reservation system has?

- Beyond the customer-engagement features, which are our main advantage, there is also the fact that we let venues manage their reservations without any intermediary between them and the end customer. That way the venue isn't represented through a marketplace brand, which tends to dilute its own brand identity. In other words, Reservation.Tools is an independent technical solution, not a marketplace-style platform for listing and searching venues. We don't take commission per reservation or per guest — you only pay an annual subscription for using the application itself. It's worth noting that if a venue is listed on several marketplace platforms, Reservation.Tools lets them centralize all their reservations with us and manage them from one place. We do this by offering, on request from any client, an integration with any marketplace for automated intake of reservations from that marketplace into our system — provided, of course, that the marketplace in question allows this technically or is willing to cooperate.

Over the years, the solution we offer has proven to be reliable and very effective for the business. Many of our clients manage more than one venue. Through a single account you can manage multiple venues centrally, with different access levels for staff and managers.

Real-time operation and data updates are extremely useful when several people from the staff are using the application at the same time. On top of that, for online reservations coming in from the website, there is an option to decline them automatically and send the customer a notification, instead of the staff having to call customers one by one.

Recently Reservation.Tools became an official partner of “Reserve with Google”. The partnership gives every Reservation.Tools user the ability to receive reservations directly through Google Search or through their Google Maps profile. That adds another reservation channel, on top of the venue's own website or Facebook page. The advantage is a wider reach of potential customers, because it also covers people searching for a venue in a given area through Google Maps.

The system is also used for managing and reporting on beaches. Can you give more details?

- Yes, we have clients who own beaches, and for them a digital solution like this for reporting on umbrellas and sunbeds is very convenient. It runs via the web and a mobile app, everything happens online.

What are the trends in the restaurant business when it comes to digitalizing services?

- Our observation is that in Bulgaria specifically there is a niche for a platform like ours. Quite a few venues still process reservations by hand and need a solution that saves them time and automates the whole process. On top of that, more and more venues are recognizing the need to build a long-term relationship with the customer and to deliver a high level of service, in order to create loyalty and support their business.