My wife, Carole, and I decided to get out of town to get warm during my recent spring break. While at our destination, Carole decided to look on the Internet for a restaurant that was new to us, had a great view, and a great reputation for food and service. Carole, always value conscious, also thought it would be good if the restaurant honored discounts. She found such a restaurant.
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She then went online and got a $50 coupon for dinner! Next, she attempted to get a reservation. She could not make reservations at TripAdvisor, Yelp, Open Table, by phoning the restaurant, or even on the restaurant’s own website. She finally got through by calling the front desk of the hotel in which the restaurant was located and asked to be connected to the bar. The people at the bar put Carole on hold so they could check to see if we would be allowed to dine at the restaurant. The bar folks took our reservation. We got there early at 6:30, and the place was practically empty. We did get a table with an excellent view. We thought that it would perhaps fill up later. It did not. We decided that maybe there was some kind of glitch in the reservations system and decided to let the management know in an attempt to be good quality professionals.
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Comments
Nice story
Thank you for this story. Clearly you approach your leisure time in the same way I do. It is all experience we can learn from. If we were interested in Italian and there was an Italian speaker in the restaurant we might go up and chat. But, since we are interested in operations and systems and operating models, then the fact that this one is not working very well is a good reason to "chat" with the manager.
I am not sure you need lean methods to solve this one though. My guess is that this is a strategy problem or a leadership problem. Change the strategy or the leader and you will find that the tables are full. But, yes, some charts to help optimise external bookings with hotel guest requirements probably would be helpful.
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