OpenTable may have to think seriously about reducing the reservation fee it charges restaurants for each diner seated using the OpenTable system. As the leading provider of free and real-time online restaurant reservations, the company is comfortably ahead of its competitors like Urbanspoon, owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp, and U.K.-based companies liveRES Ltd and Livebookings Ltd.
As the biggest player in the online restaurant reservation industry in North America, OpenTable has a significant competitive advantage with more than 13,000 of the estimated 30,000 reservation-taking full-service restaurants in North America as its customers. It has also made considerable investments in the last few years to expand its operations globally, and has a significant presence in the UK (largely due to the acquisition of toptable.com), Germany and Japan.