Pros & Cons
No website or mobile app for making restaurant reservations is as widely used by both customers and businesses as OpenTable. For years, the service has taken phone calls out of the booking equation, providing easy-to-use tools for anyone with an Internet connection. Finding a restaurant with availability and making a reservation, whether in your hometown or while traveling, has never been so convenient. Even paying at the end of the meal is easier with OpenTable. It's by far the best service and the mobile app for making and managing restaurant reservations. For all these reasons, it's an easy Editors' Choice and one of the best apps for the iPhone.
How OpenTable Works
To use OpenTable, you'll need an account, which is free to create with an email address and password. To use some features, you'll also have to enter a credit card number either in OpenTable itself or in Apple Pay, if you prefer to use Apple's system with a device that supports touch ID: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus. Although I initially expected mobile payments in OpenTable to be limited to users with Touch ID, that's not at all the case. You can indeed pay for your check by phone if you enter a credit card into the OpenTable app. I'm thrilled any iPhone user can get their hands on this new mobile payment option. That's a boon!
View All To begin looking for a restaurant, you can search for eateries nearby or in a specific city. Filtering tools let you narrow down the suggestions by neighborhood, price, user rating, cuisine, and other factors. Most of the filters are helpful, if a little sluggish at times, although in my experience the geolocation feature sometimes has glitches.
Before you make a reservation, you'll also have to select the date, time, and party size. OpenTable shows you restaurants that meet all your criteria, and it often offers alternative times in 15-minute increments. When booking a table at an in-demand restaurant, if all the reservations are taken, OpenTable looks for availability within the next few hours or days. I like that OpenTable tries to get you into the restaurant you want, but one trick novices might not know is that very trendy restaurants don't always offer their best tables and times in OpenTable. If you can't get a table at an in-demand spot, a phone call is usually worth a try.
OpenTable also lets you see your history of table bookings. That's helpful if you want to find a restaurant that you've been to before but have a spotty memory. You can also see upcoming reservations and manage them from the app, in case you need to change the party size, time, or date.
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Special Features
Mobile payments are the biggest new feature in the OpenTable app. Like I said, any iPhone user can pay for their check at the end of the meal right from their phone.if you choose to go with Apple Pay, neither OpenTable nor the restaurant gets your credit card details. The other option is to enable a credit card in OpenTable, so that the restaurant never sees your credit card, but it's stored, safely encrypted of course, in OpenTable's system. Either way, both options are worlds better than handing a credit card to a server, who walks away with it for who knows how long.
When you enter a credit card into OpenTable, you have the option of typing it or taking a quick scan using your iPhone's camera. The scanner works well and is definitely the easier option. As soon as you complete the process, which includes entering a ZIP Code and phone number, you can select between getting text messages or push notifications on your phone anytime you're at a restaurant that supports mobile payments via the OpenTable app. You can change the option at any time in the app's settings.
One more fun feature in OpenTable: the more you book, the more points you earn, which translate into vouchers for future restaurant bills. While I've used them in the past, the paper coupons OpenTable used to send me in the mail were a little embarrassing to use. It looks like in the new system you'll be able to apply credits directly through the mobile payment option, which I'd much rather do. I haven't tested this feature yet, but as soon as I have enough points, I will.
A Cordon Bleu App
OpenTable makes life simpler by removing phone calls from restaurant reservations. The new mobile payment options are great, particularly because they're not limited to iPhone owners with only the latest devices. Anyone with this app can take advantage. OpenTable is an easy Editors' Choice and is one of the best iPhone apps you can install, particularly if you eat out a lot.
Final Thoughts
