It's not your imagination — restaurant reservations are becoming harder to get

Don't adjust your dining app, because it's not you — restaurant reservations are indeed becoming more difficult to get. This is not a new phenomenon, as the dining industry has long been besieged by issues with bookings. But recent tech developments are making it so that only a select few are able to snatch up the most in-demand reservations. 

As you try to get a reservation at your favorite place, an online bot may beat you to the punch, or scalpers may block you out in order to resell the booking. And this is before the credit card companies come into play. Why is the changing landscape making restaurant reservations a rare commodity?

Bots and scalpers

Ever since dining experiences began changing with the pandemic, a "new squad of businesses, tech impresarios, and digital legmen has sprung up, offering to help diners cut through the reservation red tape, for a price," said The New Yorker. In this new era, reservations at the most desirable restaurants "are like currency." 

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What makes it so difficult is that unlike in years past, when a reservation simply required making a phone call, now there are myriad ways to try and book a table — and online reservation marketplaces, where the majority of bookings are now made, know this. As a result, websites such as Cita Marketplace and Appointment Trader "will sell you a reservation, often procured by a bot, usually made in someone else's name," said The New Yorker. This means that "several bots might be simultaneously checking the app, ten or even a hundred times per second, twenty-four hours a day, until one finds the eight-o'clock table at Bangkok Supper Club that it's been programmed to grab." This makes the odds of snagging a table against a bot much smaller.   

These developments are notable because the "vast majority of restaurant reservations are meant to be free, and you might miss out on celebrating your anniversary at the restaurant of your dreams because the system has been rigged to reward the highest bidder," said the Takeout. And the bots aren't always good for the restaurants either; if a bot reservation goes untouched, then "restaurants aren't making money on that table, and they're losing the money they spent staffing servers for it." This often means the restaurant "can't even recoup the loss via cancellation fees, since these bots tend to snag the reservations using bogus credit card numbers."

Credit card companies

Even if you don't face off against a bot trying to claim your reservation, you may encounter another foe: credit card companies. At the most high-profile restaurants, scalpers and bots often snatch up tickets first, but "with the right credit card, you have a better shot," said The Atlantic. While a number of credit card companies participate in reservation promotions, this phenomenon is most striking with American Express. 

Resy, one of the most widely used restaurant reservation apps, is owned by American Express, and as a result, the app "keeps certain tables open for the Platinum crowd, and leapfrogs such cardholders to the front of waiting lists," said The Atlantic. So if you "want to eat at the best spots, you'll fork over $695 annually for Amex Platinum, buying access to exclusive reservations."  The company even owns its own restaurant in New York City, the Centurion, which "exists for the more or less exclusive enjoyment of owners of the American Express Centurion card," said New York magazine. 

Both JPMorgan Chase and Capital One have also gotten in on the reservation game, though American Express remains the most notable player. The company also recently announced it was buying another large booking app, Tock, for $400 million. A company "using its leverage over who can sit down at a restaurant is the next step in segmenting customers based on how much they are able or willing to spend," said CNN. It marks a "continued tiering of the consumer," Joseph Nunes, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California, said to the outlet.