Dimmi – real-time restaurant booking service
Dimmi, a new online service, allows restaurants to take bookings online 24 hours a day.
The service provides restaurants with online electronic reservation diary software, which can be used for phone bookings as usual, or remotely for online bookings. Real-time information on table availability is stored in the system, and diners confirm their bookings on the spot. The service also reminds customers via email of their reservation.
Dimmi has also partnered with many of Australia’s online restaurant guides, to allow prospective diners to go directly from a restaurant review to a reservation. Partners include Mietta’s, the Age and SMH Good Food Guides, Time Out Sydney, Eatability, Australian Good Food & Travel Guide and the SBS Food Safari website.
In addition to making reservations, diners can also review the restaurant on the Dimmi website. The service also includes marketing and promotional services, allowing restaurants to build a customer database.
The service is free for customers, and costs the restaurant between $1 and $3 per booking, with bookings made through partner services costing more and, those coming from a restaurant’s own website getting the lower rate.
Craig Macindoe of Sydney’s MuMu Grill said the results of implementing Dimmi at his Crow’s Nest restaurant were very impressive, with 25% of the restaurant’s bookings now arriving online, and 90% of the online reservations being made after hours or during peak service periods.
“Online bookings are definitely the future, and Dimmi has allowed us to boost our restaurant’s overall reservations and to fill our empty seats on quieter days. I love it, bookings just appear out of cyberspace and they are instantly booked and confirmed without us needing to do a thing!” said Macindoe.
“We know that the secret to running a profitable restaurant is to fill as many seats as possible during every service, so what Dimmi does is to help put more bums on seats by marketing and promoting our partner restaurants through Australia’s largest restaurant booking network,” said Stevan Premutico, Managing Director of Dimmi.
I used the Dimmi thing to book a local restaurant for my birthday. Sounded like a good idea. Never again. It took the booking on the Wednesday evening for the following Saturday night and said everything was confirmed o.k. Then on Saturday around mid-day (two late to book anything else) the proprietor calls me to say it was a mistake and that time slot was booked. He offered a later timeslot but that was no good. I wouldn’t use this service again. Don’t risk it and book your restaurant the old fashioned way over the phone so you can be certain it’s really booked.