OpenTable Now Lets You Choose Seats In A Restaurant
Aisle or window—er, bar seat or patio table? OpenTable today announced the introduction of Seating Options, a built-in feature that allows diners to reserve specific types of seats at participating restaurants. According to an OpenTable blog post, about a third of the restaurants on that platform have signed up to offer Seating Options.
What this means practically is that diners will be able to select options like bar seating or outdoor seating or standard seating when making their reservations. (Who would choose high-top seating? Does anyone actually like dangling their legs two feet off the ground if there's another option?)
The real appeal to me seems to be the choice of bar or outdoor seating. The former could come in handy when you want to get your food fast—before a concert or theater performance, say. The latter, of course, solves the problem of booking a restaurant because it has a great patio, then showing up and hearing there are no outdoor tables available.
Restaurant listings can also be filtered by seating options along with other criteria, so if you want bar seating for two tonight at a restaurant with a gender-neutral bathroom, OpenTable now has your back.