I tried to use it to book tenhaku but it didn't work. But it is an interesting concept of using ai to make reservations. And the reservation price is quite cheap
Doesn't seem very useful. Tried booking a number of restaurants throughout the day and it refused to let me log in as I have login too many times. And frequency of calls seems to be in the range of every 40 mins once. Might be good for only those less popular restaurants.
Tried using it to book Sharikimon Chawanbu, and received an unsuccessful response after 3 days (they tried for 2 days but couldn’t get through).
Succeeded in reserving twice on previous occasions by simply calling, and didn’t find it to be a terribly hard reservation to make. So I wasn’t impressed with Autoreserve, haha.
I've never used it, but when I was booking some stuff a couple months back I noticed at least two places (can't remember which now) whose shops had AutoReserve pages said explicitly on their website that they would not accept AutoReserve. So (i) I guess the shops aren't too impressed with it either (haha) and (ii) I generally take a dim view of companies that list restaurants on their site without permission. Reminds me of the situation here in the U.S. where delivery apps will list restaurants on their sites (with the associated obscene cuts of the revenue) without ever getting permission from the restaurant itself.
It just seems like services like Autoreserve, Percotter, etc. have an increasingly limited use case. In recent years, many new joints (frequently run by younger chefs) have started taking reservations online on Tablecheck, Toreta, or even just IG. So companies like Autoreserve aren't needed for those. At the high-end, many well-reviewed restaurants have either partnered with Omakase, Tableall, or require phone-camping at specific times to get seats, so again, a service that calls once every 40mins isn't useful there.
So what we're left with is the awkward middle-ground of restaurants that are under the radar, and run by old-school chefs who don't do online reservations. And only if you're staying at a hotel without a concierge (otherwise your concierge can easily book, since it's under the radar).
It's a little odd to me to imagine a restaurant would on one hand not use online booking, but on the other be ok with robots calling (/harassing) them to make reservations. That being said Pecotter and the likes often come on top of google search, so maybe they work,,, or maybe they have really good SEO.
I think it should be like all other online concierges. They might have partnership with certain restaurants, whereas others they only will call but there is likely no hope of getting a reservation.
I remember seeing certain restaurants charging full amount when you make a reservation whereas others are charging 1000JPY.
8 Comments
I tried to use it to book tenhaku but it didn't work. But it is an interesting concept of using ai to make reservations. And the reservation price is quite cheap
Doesn't seem very useful. Tried booking a number of restaurants throughout the day and it refused to let me log in as I have login too many times. And frequency of calls seems to be in the range of every 40 mins once. Might be good for only those less popular restaurants.
Tried using it to book Sharikimon Chawanbu, and received an unsuccessful response after 3 days (they tried for 2 days but couldn’t get through).
Succeeded in reserving twice on previous occasions by simply calling, and didn’t find it to be a terribly hard reservation to make. So I wasn’t impressed with Autoreserve, haha.
I've never used it, but when I was booking some stuff a couple months back I noticed at least two places (can't remember which now) whose shops had AutoReserve pages said explicitly on their website that they would not accept AutoReserve. So (i) I guess the shops aren't too impressed with it either (haha) and (ii) I generally take a dim view of companies that list restaurants on their site without permission. Reminds me of the situation here in the U.S. where delivery apps will list restaurants on their sites (with the associated obscene cuts of the revenue) without ever getting permission from the restaurant itself.
Thanks for the replies. I suspected the reality was less impressive than the PR.
It just seems like services like Autoreserve, Percotter, etc. have an increasingly limited use case. In recent years, many new joints (frequently run by younger chefs) have started taking reservations online on Tablecheck, Toreta, or even just IG. So companies like Autoreserve aren't needed for those. At the high-end, many well-reviewed restaurants have either partnered with Omakase, Tableall, or require phone-camping at specific times to get seats, so again, a service that calls once every 40mins isn't useful there.
So what we're left with is the awkward middle-ground of restaurants that are under the radar, and run by old-school chefs who don't do online reservations. And only if you're staying at a hotel without a concierge (otherwise your concierge can easily book, since it's under the radar).
It's a little odd to me to imagine a restaurant would on one hand not use online booking, but on the other be ok with robots calling (/harassing) them to make reservations. That being said Pecotter and the likes often come on top of google search, so maybe they work,,, or maybe they have really good SEO.
I think it should be like all other online concierges. They might have partnership with certain restaurants, whereas others they only will call but there is likely no hope of getting a reservation.
I remember seeing certain restaurants charging full amount when you make a reservation whereas others are charging 1000JPY.