In my post yesterday, I explained why all legacy restaurant booking systems were just glorified “manual” diaries and without staff using their judgement and expertise to do numerous manual daily tasks behind the scenes the value of those systems was debatable. My post was controversial as it went against the propaganda that has been pushed for years that these systems manage and optimise restaurant bookings autonomously.
Then, co-incidentally, yesterday SevenRooms with its the self-awarded “Best-in-class tech” title admitted in an article in hospitalitytech.com, where Kinesh Patel, CTO & Co-Founder at SevenRooms was asked about his vision for trends to watch out for in 2025 where he said:
“In 2025, AI is set to revolutionize the hospitality industry … By automating manual, time-consuming tasks like managing reservations” [link below].
There we go! SevenRooms, have known the truth all along, that they were just offering a manual diary!
However, AI is not their new found saviour, as AI models require, need and rely on a lot of data, and as each restaurant is different, has different size tables, different table configurations, different service standards and strategies, and many more differences, meaning restaurants require bespoke solutions. Plus, these legacy systems have data frameworks that are structured wrongly. Simply put, and unfortunately for restaurants already using these legacy systems, AI models will not be able to automate your existing manual reservations systems, so do not hold your breath.
If SevenRooms genuinely thinks otherwise, Good luck!
What AI will offer these legacy systems is more camouflage and more tricks, not solutions to making their manual systems autonomous. Specifically, these legacy systems have already started this camouflage, by adding “voice AI” integrations that are linked to their same underlying and inefficient allocation methodologies they have always had.
We all know the old saying if you “put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig”
Restaurateurs need to explore their options as they owe it to their businesses, their customers and themselves.
https://lnkd.in/gVmq5V9m
Peter Petroulas
Inventor, Founder & CEO
(Judge, World Catering Technology Awards 2024, 2025, FoodBev UK)