Tummyrumble

links for 2008-01-17

• Top 10 2007 - OWASP
  The primary aim of the OWASP Top 10 is to educate developers, designers, architects and organizations about the consequences of the most common web application security vulnerabilities. The Top 10 provides basic methods to protect against these vulnerabil
  (tags: programming reference security)

No-show and cancellation rates

Interesting coincidence. Yesterday over lunch me and David were asked about rates of no-shows in the restaurant industry and whether online bookings through systems like the Livebookings Network or OpenTable makes any difference in helping to reduce them. Today I found an interesting post on the same topic by Michael bauer at SFGate.com (see link below for some interesting numbers and discussions).

We don't have any structured data proving that online reservations help reducing no-shows but based on conversations I have had with restaurateurs and studies (unfortunately not restaurant specific though) I saw a few years back when I first started working with Livebookings, online reservations do help in promoting loyalty and making sure guests show up more reliably, or if they can't, cancel the reservation beforehand.

Main factors helping the improvement I think simply are:

• Sending electronic confirmations to email and mobiles, making it easier for the guest to note down the details of the booking. (Ideally, a booking would of course automatically be added to the guest's calendar with a reminder...)
• Sending reminders before the actual dining date, which helps the guest to remember they actually did book and if they can't go they get a prod to cancel instead of just not turning up.
• Making it as easy to cancel as making the booking in the first place by just clicking a link and confirming the cancellation.

Of course my assumption here is that most people want to do the right and polite thing and actually let the restaurant know they are not coming. Everybody with half a brain understand that if not cancelled, the restaurant stands to sort out annoying problems during the night and at worst actually lose money since they might turn walk in guests down in anticipation of booked guests not showing up.

Online systems can also help in other ways such as detecting and blocking abusing users making several bookings for the same times so as to "hedge their bets", making several bookings in a row to which they never show up, require a credit card at the time of booking and so on.

In the post by Bauer an OpenTable repesentative claims they have about 5 percent no-shows which sounds just about the same as us, we usually see a no-show rate of about 4 to 5 percent. Think I will see if we can have some queries run to get fresh data on no-shows, cancellations and how they have changed over time.

URL: Michael Bauer: Between Meals : The problem with no-shows.

links for 2008-01-07

• PARKHOTEL - Stay in concrete pipes...
  Dasparkhotel versteht sich grundsätzlich und vor allem als Gastfreundschaftsgerät. Es besteht aus umfunktionierten, unglaublich robusten standardisierten Kanalrohren.
  (tags: fun hotel inspiration travel vacation holiday weird)

links for 2008-01-04

• Overcoming News Addiction
  A little over 30 days ago, I decided to go on a news fast, using my trusty 30-day trial method. I had already dropped TV news and newspapers, but I still had the habit of checking Yahoo News or CNN every day or two, so for 30 days I decided to drop all n
  (tags: health internet lifehacks news tips essay media addiction drugs)