The Middle East’s F&B outlets need to move with the times if they wish to keep up with today’s traveler tastes, according to one ATM exhibitor.

Rami Morante, in charge of business development for online portal and restaurant search engine Table-booking.com, said it was vital for restaurants to stay on top of marketing options in such as fast-paced industry.

“Connectivity is changing; even email is now old news,” he pointed out.

“About 70% of restaurants around the world have a website, but they are not necessarily attractive to look at or easy to use - or even all that helpful.

“This means that these outlets are missing out on business by not maximizing their online appeal to potential customers.”

Morante said Table-booking.com, which he described as “a mix of FaceBook, My Space, Wikipedia and Google, but all for gastronomy”, was uniquely positioned to help such outlets.

“In the current global economic environment we believe the platform and system is more relevant than ever as a service that helps to optimise the future of the restaurant industry and gastronomy in general,” he asserted.



The concept, which was launched in Dubai in 2007, has added several new features over the past year, Morante continued.

“For restaurants we can offer them their own website which they can custom-build with the assistance of our team and which can appear in nine languages,” he said.

“Then in addition to the interactive online restaurant-booking and management system, we cover all major culinary events worldwide with video clips and we also now provide our own Wine-, Spice-, Cocktail- and Cigarpedia channels, through which connoisseurs can share their knowledge.” 

Morante added that the unique selling point of the site, which counts Radisson Blu, Kempinski and Rotana among its clients, was that it was free for restaurants to join.

“All our services are for free – we don’t charge monthly fees. We just ask for a nominal booking fee per person that is booked through table-booking.com, with a maximum of 4 guests. More guests in the same booking are for free as well,” he explained.