I'm a little supprised booking platforms aren't doing enough to handle this. It feels like it could be solvable if the platform got told about no-shows you could at the very least blacklist that email address (or require payment upfront for them) or set a bit that previous customers don't pay a deposit.
Of course this is also a classic application for ML, if you track enough metadata and know about no-shows then I imagine you get to squash 99% of this problem, and if the restaurant gives you the ability to require a deposit then just shove any users with a bad score down that path rather than reject entirely.
It's not completely clear to me why the solution to restaurant reservation squatting is imposing a minimum dinner order while people are there.
My (hot) take is that these restaurants want to squeeze their customers more and are using a common customer complaint ("restaurant reservations are hard to get") to get buy-in for the change.
I wouldn't go to a restaurant with anti-consumer practices like this.
I think you missed the part where have to pay the minmum spend value up front when they book the reservation, and use that as a credit when they arrive for the reservation for dinner.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 23.8 ms ] threadI'm a little supprised booking platforms aren't doing enough to handle this. It feels like it could be solvable if the platform got told about no-shows you could at the very least blacklist that email address (or require payment upfront for them) or set a bit that previous customers don't pay a deposit.
Of course this is also a classic application for ML, if you track enough metadata and know about no-shows then I imagine you get to squash 99% of this problem, and if the restaurant gives you the ability to require a deposit then just shove any users with a bad score down that path rather than reject entirely.
My (hot) take is that these restaurants want to squeeze their customers more and are using a common customer complaint ("restaurant reservations are hard to get") to get buy-in for the change.
I wouldn't go to a restaurant with anti-consumer practices like this.