About this site

Over several days, I spent hours clicking through restaurant websites. Hotel booked in Amsterdam, but no availability at the highly rated hotel restaurants. In the area and wider surroundings, only waiting lists. At some point I gave up hope and searched more broadly across the entire Netherlands — different cities, since an overnight stay was already planned. From Groningen to Goes, from zero to three stars: everywhere either no availability or a waiting list.

An extreme example, but it was the trigger to start building this. Because I had noticed before that it's pretty hopeless to decide on a Saturday afternoon that you'd like to go out for a nice dinner somewhere.

Most restaurants — and their booking platforms — assume you always have a specific restaurant in mind and then look for a date when it's available. In that case, it doesn't matter that more than five different reservation systems exist: you end up directly at the booking option for that one restaurant anyway.

But for someone who has decided on short notice to dine at this type of restaurant in a particular region at a specific time, finding a spot takes considerable effort.

Generic platforms like TheFork don't solve this either. Many restaurants only list their quiet days there — as an extra channel to attract guests. For someone searching with a date already in mind, that's not helpful.

The availability data from the various platforms can be found through their APIs. The tricky part is determining which restaurant uses which reservation system and what their specific ID is. Bringing all that together was a major undertaking — and no, it wasn't done by hand.

It's quite something to realise that all these platforms are fairly closed. That's understandable from their business model: they earn from every booking and don't want everyone to be able to reserve through other channels.

My reasoning: the average guest is practical, and the barrier to calling is quite high for most people. If my platform only shows availability and then redirects to the website or directly to the booking widget of the relevant platform, there's nothing wrong with that — and everyone should be happy.

A direct link to a specific time slot on the correct platform is not always technically possible. That feature will become available when it can. In the less ideal case, I simply redirect to the restaurant page, where you can make your booking through the offered widget.

To be clear: this search engine does not make 'soft' reservations. If there's one table left somewhere and someone else books it between your moment of searching and completing your booking on the restaurant site, that's just bad luck. Nothing can be done about it given the chosen approach.