Washingtonian Magazine and OpenTable.com Announce Strategic Alliance
August 3, 2000
|
WASHINGTON, DC (August 3, 2000) – Washingtonian Magazine and OpenTable.com (www.opentable.com), the leader in online restaurant reservations, announced today a strategic marketing and business partnership that makes real-time restaurant reservations available via OpenTable.com on Washingtonian.com, one of the most visited regional content-oriented websites in the United States. Visitors to Washingtonian.com (www.washingtonian.com) can now make real-time reservations at top Washington restaurants using OpenTable.com’s reservation technology. OpenTable.com will also incorporate restaurant reviews from The Washingtonian into the Washington DC pages of its website in order to help consumers make more educated dining decisions.
Under the agreement, OpenTable.com has built links to its revolutionary real-time restaurant reservation functionality on specific pages of Washingtonian.com. Visitors to Washingtonian.com now have access to a free, personalized dining reservation system that allows them to instantly reserve tables at the best restaurants throughout the DC metropolitan area. OpenTable.com’s technology enables diners to search for a restaurant online — using criteria such as cuisine type, price range or neighborhood — and delivers immediate, online confirmation of reservations. Confirmed reservations are simultaneously delivered to the restaurant via OpenTable.com’s proprietary, Internet-connected Electronic Reservation Book (ERB).
OpenTable.com and Washingtonian.com will develop a co-branded web site that will feature reviews and information from Washingtonian Magazine and OpenTable.com’s real-time reservation technology. Visitors to Washingtonian.com will be able to access OpenTable.com’s reservations via the ‘Restaurants & Dining’, ‘Individual Restaurant Review’ and the ‘100 Best Restaurants’ sections of Washingtonian.com. The two organizations will also develop other joint programs for diners and restaurants.
“Washingtonian.com has some of the best local content available on the Internet,” said Sid Gorham, OpenTable.com’s vice president of business development. “This agreement will bring Washingtonian.com visitors the unique ability to use that content to make dining reservations at their favorite restaurants. We’re very pleased that Washingtonian shares our enthusiasm for helping consumers make the most of their time online.”
Thomas Head, executive wine and food editor at the Washingtonian said; “We expect OpenTable.com to be a tremendous resource for visitors to Washingtonian.com. It’s clear that online reservations are becoming widely accepted by restaurants and consumers alike, and OpenTable.com is truly helping diners make the reservation process more efficient. We’re excited about adding their unique service to the pages of Washingtonian.com.”
About Washingtonian.com
Washingtonian.com, the online version of The Washingtonian magazine, offers users many of the same features readers have come to rely on from "the magazine Washington lives by"--including expert restaurant reviews
and recommendations on everything from top doctors to weekend travel--plus such online-only features as theater reviews, Q&A advice from the magazine's restaurant critics, and news and gossip items that make up the Washington "Buzz." With a paid circulation of 160,000, The Washingtonian is number one in market penetration of all city and regional magazines, reaching one in nine area households. Washingtonian Online, now in its sixth year of operation, reaches an average of 123,000 unique visitors a month.
About OpenTable.com
OpenTable.com is dedicated to harnessing the power of the Internet for restaurants and providing dining consumers with the best possible reservation experience. The company’s proprietary electronic reservation book (ERB) introduces revolutionary customer relationship management, marketing, and yield management tools, as well as real-time online reservations, to the restaurant industry. OpenTable.com has strategically partnered with leading Internet and media companies including America Online (AOL) Digital City, OracleMobile.com, The Chicago Tribune’s Metromix.com, The New York Times NYToday.com and The Boston Globe’s Boston.com. OpenTable.com’s customers include more than 800 of the nation’s top restaurants. The company is backed by leading venture capital firms Impact Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital, as well as American Express. OpenTable.com is based in San Francisco, California, and has offices in seventeen cities including New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington DC. For more information about OpenTable.com or its online restaurant reservation network visit www.opentable.com or call 1.800.OPENTABLE.
Back to OpenTable News
|
|