The industry leader in online reservation booking, OpenTable, was hit with a scandal as it was discovered that one of its employees had created hundreds of bogus reservations through a rival booking site.
According to Eater Chicago, 45 restaurants that use the rival service called Reserve were affected, most notably over the super-busy Valentine’s Day period. This caused numerous no-shows and prevented those restaurants from allocating tables to actual, paying customers.
Reserve itself uncovered the scheme through a security audit and brought the evidence to OpenTable.
“This was obviously done with the intent to harm Reserve,” said Reserve COO Michael Wesner.
OpenTable has confirmed that these actions were undertaken by a single employee operating outside the company’s normal operating guidelines. The employee in question was immediately terminated and OpenTable had this to say:
“We extend our sincerest apologies to the restaurants in Chicago that were impacted by the disgraceful, unsanctioned activity of a lone OpenTable employee. When this activity was brought to our attention, we swiftly investigated and the employee was terminated immediately. We have begun reaching out to the restaurants and are committed to making it right.”
As competition heats up in the online-reservation space, companies will need to be vigilant about issues such as this. As for this incident, OpenTable has said that affected restaurants would be compensated for their lost revenue.
