by Real Business - Thursday, 30th August 2007

This is the page

Do you know why the internet travel business took off the way it did? Because there were so many companies doing it. The boom came when Easyjet was joined by Ryanair, then Expedia, then Lastminute. The public were inundated.

Now I am faced with a Catch 22 that nags away at me. Toptable.co.uk is a pioneer in its field. Users can log in, pick from over 1,200 restaurants and find their ideal setting based on location, price, even ambience. We are the first people to work with restaurants to provide this kind of service. We should have a successful monopoly, but we don’t. Only two per cent of restaurant bookings are made online. Even though most of that revenue comes to us, if a few rivals would follow suit, generate some more buzz about the idea, it would help to get people off the phone and onto the web. I don’t know anyone who physically goes into a travel agent any more; you just book your air ticket online. But when I booked my first flight, I still called the operator to check up on my booking. The same can be said of Toptable. It’s like any new service, try it once, see it work and you’re converted. But only with some healthy competition stirring up the water, bringing their marketing strategies, redeveloping our concept, can we get more people taking that first step. As for fearing the competition, I’m confident that Toptable will retain its leader status. We’re older, wiser and more experienced, but we also understand that to truly make a dent in the market, it’s the numbers that count. It’s a war against the phone, and we need some allies to unite against the common enemy. After that, however, it’s open season. As the old saying goes, all is fair…

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