Quandoo reports significant takeup in Singapore, Australia

Quandoo reports 720 restaurant partners, 1.5 million seated diners in the last 12 months and over 1,400 verified reviews from Singapore diners each month. The online restaurant reservation service, launched in Singapore in 2014, sees 53% of its Singapore users making repeat reservations. The company assessed publicly-available information of the industry and the respective market competitors by the number of connected partner restaurants, and has found it leads in seven markets around the world, including in Singapore, Hong Kong and Turkey.

The company, which also serves Australia, Lebanon, and the UAE in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, it has seen similar trends globally. The company grew its partner restaurant base by 117% from 6,200 restaurants to 13,500 restaurants and has seated more than 24 million diners globally. Quandoo’s penetration of Australia has been particularly fast. Within eight months 1,250 restaurants have joined Quandoo.

Philipp Magin, founder and CEO of Quandoo, said, “Our ambition remains the same: to be the driving force in the digitalising of the restaurant reservation space. The changes that we have undergone in the last year have allowed us to transform our company towards maintaining this objective in a more and more competitive market environment. While the cultural and strategic shift has not been easy to achieve, we are now better equipped than ever before in becoming the leading provider for restaurant reservations globally.”

Dr Charlotte Bruce, Quandoo Vice President Asia and Pacific, said, “Singapore is a melting pot of different cultures with great diversity of cuisines. In Asia, it offers one of the most sophisticated and world-­class dining scenes. Competition is fierce and Quandoo identified an opportunity to help businesses use this incredible platform to grow their business and stay ahead of the curve. We have been relentless in our efforts since day one and are proud of our position as market leaders – having gone against competition that have been in the market for up to five years.”

The company further established several alliances in the last year, partnering for example with Foursquare in Turkey. 

RHB customers in Malaysia to enjoy TABLEAPP online reservation privileges

Source: RHB Banking Group. From left: Dato’ Khairussaleh Ramli, Group Managing Director for RHB Banking Group and Benson Chang, Founder of TABLEAPP officiating the collaboration to provide customers with a fast and convenient dining reservation experience.

The RHB Banking Group has partnered exclusively with TABLEAPP, Malaysia’s premier online restaurant reservation portal, to provide customers with a fast and convenient dining reservation experience. This initiative is part of RHB’s Digital Journey, and marks RHB’s first collaboration with a startup in providing lifestyle offerings and e-commerce payment services.

“We want to create a digital ecosystem around the everyday lifestyle needs of our customers. With TABLEAPP, customers can enjoy a new dining experience through the convenience of making online restaurant reservations, free of charge. Reservations via TABLEAPP can be made 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and customers will receive instant confirmation. Customers will also be able to buy discounted dining vouchers for premier restaurants that are registered with TABLEAPP. For RHB’s customers, we also offer cashless payment options, for payment via RHB Now and with RHB cards,” said Dato’ Khairussaleh Ramli, Group Managing Director for RHB Banking Group.

"We will continue to enhance customer experience. RHB customers will eventually be able to pre-order online and pay for meals before arriving at the restaurant.”

The TABLEAPP reservation application currently has more than 380 restaurants in Malaysia and 100 restaurants in Thailand and is looking to grow the number to 1,000 by the end of 2016.

As part of the Group’s efforts in broadening its offerings for Affluent and Mass Affluent markets, RHB Signature, Infinite and Platinum cardholders will be entitled to cashback privileges of 10 and 15% respectively when bookings are made via TABLEAPP. The offer ends 29 February 2016.

RHB customers will also enjoy discounted deals, via the existing Mobile Lifestyle App, and can reserve and purchase discounted coupons through the app.

Interested?

Download the Mobile Lifestyle App

Download TABLEAPP

Cristal Group develops proprietary multilingual commission-free reservations tool

The Cristal Group will become the first hotel management company worldwide to develop its own zero commission based reservations tool that promises cheaper hotels.

A new multilingual website based on a proprietary booking engine will launch this month. According to Cristal's Chief Operating Officer Kamal Fakhoury, the new website will make it easier for customers to book Cristal Hotels, with extended language options that will include Arabic, and Chinese among other languages. 

“With hotels in Abu Dhabi, Iraq, Lebanon and more to come in Saudi Arabia, we are building an international client base and it is vital that we can communicate with potential customers in their language,” he said.

“Looking ahead, China and Russia have been identified as major growth markets for the future, with 140 million Chinese alone visiting overseas destinations in 2015 – while Germany remains a strong source market for destinations such as UAE.”

Further benefits of the new website will be competitive pricing, as the proprietary booking engine ensuring that hotels do not pay direct web booking commission and can pass this saving on to owners and customers. The new website will also feature a dedicated media, marketing and HR portal, he added.

“We will ensure we have international reach through partnering with global distribution experts, Travel click, but have determined the scope of the new brand website through intensive research that ultimately benefits both the client and the hotels.”

The Cristal Group was established in the UAE in 2007 followed by the British Virgin Islands in 2012 to deliver hospitality consultancy, technical services, asset management and brand management. Its vision is to be the premier business and leisure hotel operator in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.