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Rise in 'reservation ghosting' hits NYC restaurants
Have you ever booked a reservation only to decide later that you don’t feel like going? It’s something that’s become known as "reservation ghosting" and restaurants say it's happening more often. FOX 5 NY’s Duarte Geraldino takes a closer look at why and if restaurants are doing anything about it.
NEW YORK CITY - Have you ever booked a reservation only to decide later that you actually don't feel like going? It’s become known as "reservation ghosting" and restaurants in New York City say it's happening more often.
Jeremy Wladis is the owner of Harvest American Bistro on the Upper West Side. To avoid the wait, people make reservations at his establishment sometimes weeks in advance. But Wladis says more and more people are making reservations than actually showing up.
"Cancelations can be, in my world, 15, 20% of the time," Wladis said.
And that really hurts the bottom line. Restaurants already have tiny profit margins, around 10% for the best of them, and no shows are at 20% citywide, according to Resy and OpenTable.
Andrew Rigie is the executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, which represents thousands of restaurants. He says people are double, even triple booking reservations at hotspots just to make sure they get a table somewhere.
"We've heard people that have multiple restaurants and people have even made restaurant reservations at more than one of their restaurants and then canceled one of them, gone to the other," Rigie said.
But there's another reason for all the no shows – a growing secondary market for restaurant reservations.
"There's been a big problem with restaurant reservation scalping where people are actually booking hard to get restaurant reservations and then scalping them and selling them online to the highest bidder," Rigie said.
Reservation scalping is supposed to be illegal, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul still hasn't signed the bill into law. So, what can restaurants do?
OpenTable is now requiring deposits to make reservations. They say it cuts no shows, but a lot of restaurants don't want to alienate customers by charging fees. The worry is all the ghosting could mean higher prices for everyone.
The company is also tracking the no shows, and they'll flag you, so the next time you try to make a reservation at some hot new place, they'll know that you might ghost them.