Dimmi launches Australia's first real-time online restaurant reservations service to drive more bookings
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Dimmi has generated over 50,000 diners for participating restaurants in just three months
Dimmi, Australia’s first real-time online restaurant reservations service and the nation’s largest online restaurant booking network saw 50,000 covers booked via its online booking engine in just three months. 66 percent of those online bookings were made when restaurants were least equipped to handle bookings, with 23 percent booked while restaurants were closed and 43 percent made during peak service hours.
Dimmi, which means “tell me” in Italian, simplifies the restaurant booking process for the 1.5 million diners that search for restaurants on it every month. Diners can now make instantly confirmed online bookings at almost 1,000 leading restaurants across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
In an Australian first, Gordon Ramsay’s first Australian restaurants Maze and Maze Grill in Melbourne, opened for reservations exclusively via the Dimmi booking engine for the four weeks until opening night on 29th March. Bookings have gone phenomenally well, and the General Manager, Enda Cunningham, is pleased with the amazing response.
"We are delighted with the response to opening for reservations online with Dimmi. Within a few hours of going live we were fully committed on our opening night and in the week since, bookings have exceeded expectations. We're absolutely thrilled and are very much looking forward to opening the doors on March 29th and introducing our guests to maze Melbourne," said Enda Cunningham.
“We use real-time reservations in our other restaurants across the world and the feedback from our diners is great. Consumers are getting more adventurous with their restaurant choices and many are investigating their dining options on the web. Being able to search and compare restaurants on-line and then make the reservation on-line at the click of a button makes a lot of sense and is often a lot easier than trying to contact restaurants by phone or email,” said Luke Mangan.
Craig Macindoe, owner of the Good Food Guide awarded MuMu Grill in Crows Nest noted: "The Dimmi booking system is magic – we had 200 people booking through it in our first two weeks of use. Can any other system beat that?”
With no up-front costs for restaurants and a 100 percent performance based model where restaurants only pay a small booking fee after customers have dined in the restaurant, many of the leading restaurants across the country have been quick to join the program with hundreds of new restaurants joining every month. Some of Dimmi’s top performing restaurants are already accepting 30-35 percent of bookings online.
Restaurants already accepting real-time bookings through Dimmi include Sydney’s Quay, Bilson’s, Wildfire, Catalina, Flying Fish, Pier and Melbourne’s Flower Drum, The Italian, Oyster Little Bourke, The Deanery, Sapore, Balzari, Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, Gordon Ramsay’s new restaurant Maze and Brisbane’s Restaurant Two, C’est Bon and Restaurant Rapide. Dimmi will be launching in Canberra later this year and Adelaide and Perth next year.
“The introduction of real-time restaurant reservations is long overdue for the Australian market. The concept has been hugely successful in the USA and UK markets for over a decade now and in 2009 over 40 million restaurant reservations were made online in real-time. Within the next five years we anticipate that 50 percent of restaurant bookings will be made online,” said Stevan Premutico, Managing Director of Dimmi.
“Millions of Australian's search for restaurants online every month and with Dimmi now providing them with the ability to make an instant real-time booking it removes the hassle and frustration factor for them. This is an exciting time indeed for the Australian restaurant industry as we follow the success of online reservations achieved in overseas markets” said Cliff Rosenberg, Non-Executive Director of Dimmi & Managing Director of Linkedin Australia & NZ.
Dimmi helps restaurants to automate and streamline the reservations process, effectively reducing time wasted responding to emails and voicemails and most importantly capturing traditionally lost bookings. The Dimmi booking system sends immediate confirmations by email to diners and an automatic reminder the day before the booking to minimise no shows. The system also includes an automatic database builder to help restaurants easily develop a database of their customers.
“Our proposition to restaurants is pretty simple. We understand that the key to running a successful restaurant is to fill as many seats as possible during every service, so what we do is to put more bums on seats for our restaurants,” said Stevan Premutico.
Dimmi helps to drive more bookings and helps to fill empty seats by promoting partner restaurants to over 1.5 million diners searching for restaurants every month through the Dimmi Booking Network. They include Best Restaurants - www.bestrestaurants.com.au ; Eatability - www.eatability.com.au ; My247 – www.my247.com.au, Australian Good Food & Travel Guide - www.agfg.com.au, Food Wine Sleep - www.foodwinesleep.com.au and many more high profile online restaurant guides.
ENDS
About Dimmi - www.dimmi.com.au
Launched to the public in late 2009, Dimmi is Australia’s first real-time online reservations system providing consumers with instantly confirmed bookings at almost 1,000 leading restaurants, free of charge via the web. In the past three months alone, Dimmi has successfully seated over 50,000 diners in restaurants across the country.
Dimmi’s real-time reservation booking service is fool-proof as the reservation diners make is instantly recorded in the restaurant's Electronic Reservation System, the same one the restaurant uses to manage its reservations.
Free to use, Dimmi offers hassle free, quick, discreet and instant restaurant bookings 24/7. Dimmi has created the largest online restaurant booking network in Australia and the Dimmi booking service can be found on the country’s leading online restaurant guides, including Best Restaurants, Eatability, Australian Good Food & Travel Guide, Food Wine Sleep and many more.
Dimmi allows diners, tourists and business people to book tables at all types of restaurants ranging from the three-hat fine dining establishments, restaurant and hotel groups to the more casual suburban eateries.
Dimmi ‘s Managing Director and Founder, Stevan Premutico brings more than ten years experience in hospitality marketing across three continents (US, UK and Australia) to his role. His career highlights have included launching The Hilton Sydney in 2006 - which was the most successful and best publicised launch in Hilton’s history; and winning the UK’s Hospitality Young Marketeer of the Year Award in 2007.
Stevan Premutico, Managing Director, Dimmi