Reservation Hop is a good example of many of the current breed of parasitic startups that want to create a new class of middleman.
The hospitality industry is tough work and something guaranteed to irritate restauranteurs are reservations that don’t show up.
One startup that seems almost certain to attract the ire of the restaurant industry is Reservation Hop – “We make reservations at the hottest restaurants in advance so you don’t have to.”
Reservation Hop makes table reservations at popular restaurants and then sells them through their website.
We book up restaurant reservations in advance. We only book prime-time restaurant reservations at the hottest local establishments, and we mostly list high-demand restaurants that are booked up on other platforms.
This is probably one of the worst examples of the middleman culture that dominates much of the current startup thinking.
Almost certainly there’s a market need for proxy queue jumpers – although one wonders how profitable it is when the transaction fees are under $10 – but this service will deeply irritate restaurant owners and diners who are crowded out by these ‘parasite’ services.
In many ways, Reservation Hop illustrates the problems with this phase of our current startup mania; the rise opportunistic businesses that are more akin to parasites than services that add value.
The Reservation Hop website assures patrons that there’s a 99% chance their booking will be honored by the restaurant on the night, we can expect establishments to start messing with that statistic as they wise up to the business.
Many in the startup sector speak about how new technology improves the world, services like Reservation hop illustrate that not every idea is a step forward.
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