Yelp, a fully user-generated review site has recently announced a partnership with a website called OpenTable, which provides restaurant reservations services. This will allow Yelp users to reserve tables at many different restaurants straight from the site. 29% of the current businesses that have been reviews on Yelp are restaurants, and according to Yelps director of communications, Stephanie Ichinose, users had been asking for this integration of services for some time now. This joining of forces seems to be more in response to the recent release of UrbanSpoon’s iPhone App, called Urbanspoon Rezbook, which allowed reservations to be made, though, rather than user demand.
The deal does not require Yelp users to create an account on OpenTable if they don’t already have one. Users will be able to participate in OpenTable’s Dining Reward Points. Reserving a table at a restaurant normally gives a user 100 points, which is just arbitrary money, which can then be saved up. Once a user reached 20,000 they will be able to redeem them for a $20 dining check. These checks will be redeemable at 11,000 restaurants across North America, and will be going international sometime after. Yelp and OpenTable have not set a date for the international release of the combination of services, though, as it is assumed that they are waiting to see how things go for them in North America before expanding to the rest of the world.
Reportedly, Yelp has over 11 thousand reviews, and received 32 million unique views in the month of May alone. With this kind of traffic, plus the extra traffic possible coming with the added features available, it seems that his combo will be quite a hit. We will have to wait and see, though, if it does better than UrbanSpoon.
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