Booking platforms: what you rent and what you own

A booking platform is a website or app where guests can find restaurants and book tables, often across a whole city or country. For a restaurant, joining one can bring guests who would never have found it otherwise, with very little effort: the platform handles the listing, the booking flow and often the reminders. In exchange, the platform usually takes a fee, and it often keeps a closer relationship with the guest than the restaurant does.

That is a trade, not a trap. Some venues do very well from booking platforms, especially when they are new, in tourist areas or in competitive neighbourhoods. Others find, after a year or two, that a large share of their regulars book through the platform, that they are paying fees on guests who would have come anyway, and that they know less about those guests than they thought.

This guide sets out the trade in plain terms: what you rent from a platform, what you own, what it costs, whose guest data it is, how to avoid double bookings when you use several channels, and how to decide where your bookings should come from. Every figure in it is an example.

When you list on a booking platform, you are renting three things.

All three are valuable. All three stop when you leave, because they belong to the platform, not to you.

What you own is the relationship you build directly: guests who know your name, find you through your own website, your Google Business Profile or your social accounts, and book on your own booking page. You own your reviews on your own profile, your menu and your brand. And you own the guest records you collect yourself, with the guest's consent, under your own privacy notice.

The value of what you own grows over time, and it stays with you if you change systems or platforms. That is the main argument for building your own booking channel even if you also use platforms.

Platforms charge in different ways, and a venue should understand exactly which charges apply to it before comparing.

To understand the true cost, add up everything paid to the platform in a typical month and divide by the number of covers it booked. That cost per cover is the number to compare with other channels. Our guide to commission-free bookings works through the arithmetic in detail.

When a guest books through a platform, two businesses end up holding information about them: the platform, which has the guest's account, history across many restaurants and contact details, and the restaurant, which has the booking. What each is allowed to do with that information depends on the platform's terms, the consent the guest gave and the privacy law where you trade.

In practice, this matters most in two situations. The first is marketing: you may or may not be able to contact a guest who booked through a platform, depending on how consent was collected. The second is leaving: if you stop using the platform, the guest history it holds may not come with you, or may come in a limited form.

Before relying on a platform for most of your bookings, read its terms on guest data. Ask, specifically: what guest information do we receive, can we contact these guests ourselves, and what happens to the data if we leave? In the UK and the EU, data protection law sets rules on consent and the use of personal data; the UK regulator's guidance for organisations is a starting point.

The guest data that is most clearly yours is the data guests give you directly: when they book on your own booking page, sign up for your emails, leave feedback or visit and are recorded in your own system. Collected with clear consent and a privacy notice, it is the foundation of everything that builds regulars: knowing who comes back, remembering preferences and allergies, inviting people back.

That is why a venue's own booking page matters even if platforms bring in many guests. Every guest who books directly adds to a list you control. Whatever system holds that list, ask the same questions you would ask a platform: what is stored, who can use it, and what you could take with you if you changed systems.

Platforms tend to make the most sense in a few situations.

In each case, the platform is buying reach the venue cannot easily get any other way, and the fee is the price of that reach.

The trade starts to turn when the platform is mostly booking guests who would have come anyway: regulars, people who searched for you by name, guests who saw your Instagram. Paying a fee for each of them buys no new reach.

Signs that this is happening:

The last of these is common and easy to fix. If your website's booking button or your Google profile's booking link points at a platform, every guest who finds you directly is being sent somewhere that charges for them.

Most venues do not need to choose between platforms and their own booking page. They can use both, deliberately: the platform for reach, their own page for everyone who finds them directly.

That means making the direct route the obvious one wherever you control it:

Commission-free bookings through your own channels then grow as your regular trade grows, while the platform keeps doing what it is good at: bringing in guests who have not found you yet.

Using several booking channels creates one practical risk: double bookings. If a platform and your own booking page both sell the same tables, and they do not share availability in real time, two guests can be given the same table at the same time.

There are a few ways to prevent it:

The simplest prevention is fewer channels: each extra channel without a live connection is another place where a table can be sold twice.

No-show rates can differ between channels, and they are part of the cost. A booking that does not arrive costs the venue a table it could have sold, and if it came through a platform that charges per booking rather than per guest seated, it may have cost a fee too.

Look at no-shows by source for a few months. Some venues find platform bookings no-show more often, because guests book several places and choose later; others find the opposite, because the platform's reminders work well. Whatever your figures say, include them when you compare channels, and check how each platform treats a no-show in its fees. Our guide to what counts as a no-show covers how to record them consistently.

Platforms often show their own reviews of your venue, written by guests who booked through them. Those reviews help the venue on the platform, but they stay on the platform. Reviews on your own Google Business Profile, by contrast, appear wherever guests search for you, and they stay with you whatever booking system you use.

If you use platforms, reply to reviews there too, because guests on the platform read them. But put more effort into reviews on your own profiles, because that is the reputation you own. Asking happy guests to leave a review on Google, without offering anything in return, builds something that lasts beyond any contract.

Before signing with a platform, read the contract with the same care as a lease. Look for the fees and how and when they can change, the minimum term, the notice period for leaving, any charges for leaving early, what happens to guest data during and after the contract, and whether the platform can show competitors on your listing.

Platforms change their terms over time, and the terms you signed are not always the terms you have two years later. Diary a review of each platform's contract every year, alongside your numbers on new guests and cost per cover, and decide deliberately whether to stay.

To decide what platforms are worth to you, look at a few months of bookings by source. For each channel, work out:

An invented example: a platform books 600 covers in a month at an example cost of 2.50 a cover, which is 1,500. If 400 of those were returning guests who booked through the platform out of habit, 1,000 of the cost bought no new reach. Moving those returning guests to your own booking page, by making it the obvious route, saves most of that, while the platform keeps bringing in the 200 new guests.

When the numbers are in, a short set of questions usually settles what to do with each platform.

Most venues end up with an answer somewhere in the middle: keep a platform for reach, stop sending it guests it did not find, and review the numbers every few months.

The floor team and the hosts are part of the trade too. They see which guests are regulars, they hear how guests found the venue, and they can invite guests to book directly next time. A host who says "next time, book on our own page, it's quicker" moves a little of the regular trade back to the channel the venue owns, every night.

Make sure they know why it matters, and give them something simple to say and something to hand over if you have one: a card with the booking page address, or a line on the bill. Keep it light. Guests should feel invited, not lectured about fees.

If you decide to leave a platform, plan it. Find out what guest data you can export, and in what form. Make sure every route that sends guests to the platform, from your website to your Google profile, points to your own booking page instead. Honour existing bookings made through the platform. Tell your regulars how to book directly, through your own emails if you have their consent.

Expect a dip in new guests at first, because the reach you rented has gone. Watch your own channels closely in the months after, and be ready to put some of the money saved into reaching new guests in other ways.

servearound gives each venue its own booking page and a widget for its own website, so guests who find you directly can book without a platform or a per-cover fee. Guests who book that way become guest records in your own servearound account, with their visits and the notes and allergies your team records, and with marketing consent collected from your booking page. See the reservations module and guest profiles.

Analytics shows bookings by source, such as your booking page, the widget on your website, phone and walk-in. servearound does not connect to other booking platforms, so bookings taken on a platform need entering by hand to keep one list of tables and avoid double bookings. Guests cannot be exported from servearound today. Our pricing is a flat price per venue rather than a fee per cover.

Usually some combination of per-cover fees, subscriptions, marketing fees and payment fees. Add up everything paid in a month and divide by the covers booked to compare platforms fairly.

They can be, especially for new venues, tourist areas and quiet periods, where they bring guests you could not reach otherwise. They are worth less when they mostly book regulars and guests who searched for you by name.

It depends on the platform's terms, the consent the guest gave and the law where you trade. Read the terms and ask what you receive, whether you can contact the guests, and what happens if you leave.

Make your own booking page the route wherever you control it: your website, your Google profile, your Instagram bio and your emails. Keep platforms for reach.

Use one system that holds every booking, give each channel its own allocation, or enter platform bookings straight away and close the matching availability. Check tomorrow's bookings every afternoon.

Look at your numbers first: how many new guests it brings, what it costs per cover and how many of its bookings are regulars. If you leave, move every route guests use to find you to your own booking page first.

Charges for each guest booked through a platform. They are often the largest part of what a platform costs a busy venue.

Yes, and many venues do: the platform for reach, the booking page for everyone who finds you directly. Make sure availability is shared or allocated so tables are not double booked.

Every few months, with three figures for each: new guests brought, total cost per new guest, and no-shows. Review the contract itself once a year.

Some do, and those are the guests worth converting to direct bookings: invite them, at the end of their visit and in any messages you are allowed to send, to book directly next time.

Fees and how they change, notice periods, guest data rights, what happens to data when you leave, and whether the platform can promote competitors on your listing.

Booking platforms rent you reach, a booking flow and sometimes marketing, in exchange for cover fees and other charges, and the guest relationship is partly theirs. What you own is the direct relationship: your booking page, your profiles, your reviews and the guest data you collect yourself with consent. Platforms make most sense for new venues, tourist areas and quiet periods.

Use them deliberately. Point every route you control, from your website to your Google profile and Instagram, at your own booking page, so guests who find you directly book commission-free. Read the terms on guest data, compare total cost per cover, prevent double bookings with shared or allocated availability, and judge each platform by the new guests it brings rather than the bookings it takes.