Opentable, a website that allows people to make restaurant reservations online, was founded by Chuck Templeton in 1999. The website was initially available for residents of San Francisco only, and had a limited data base of the restaurants of San Francisco. Today, the website has a database of over 43,000 restaurants in various states of the USA, in addition to a few international cities as well. Opentable is now fully owned by The Priceline Group.
Opentable’s affiliate program was created to allow website, widget, and application owners to obtain benefits by allowing their users access to Opentable’s restaurant database. Opentable has long been providing access to its API, to allow affiliates to enhance their applications, widgets or websites, and be able to easily connect their audience with the restaurant database available at Opentable.
Opentable’s affiliate program works seamlessly. The API system provides affiliates with all the required details of restaurants, including their name, address, and phone number. Opentable provides unique restaurant reservation links to all of its affiliates. The affiliates can then display all these links on their websites, along with the respective restaurant information. If a user on an affiliate marketers’ website clicks on any of these reservation links, they will automatically be routed to Opentable.
Opentable’s policy states that all new affiliates start as non-revenue partners. However, once they have consistently referred over 100 reservation seats per month, they are eligible for sharing the revenue and gaining commissions.
To become an affiliate partner at Opentable, you must fill in the application form provided on the website. Once you have sent in your application, Opentable’s team will thoroughly analyze it to determine whether or not you are eligible for becoming an affiliate partner. If your application is approved, Opentable will send you an email with your credentials; these are required to build the unique reservation links.
The entire process, from registration to the creation of the unique reservation links, may take at least two to three weeks.
Opentable is one of the websites that give affiliates access to their APIs. The website allows affiliates to route a large amount of traffic to their websites, by displaying the huge restaurant database of Opentable.
Affiliates, in addition, also get the opportunity to be attached to a brand name as established as that of Opentable, which immediately lends weight and credibility to their own brand.
Opentable sees close to 23 million users every month – affiliates can partake of this traffic and use it to substantially increase their revenue.
Opentable’s market consists of cities in the United States of America, as well as cities of Australia, France, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom – the services of Opentable are limited to these cities. The website can be viewed by the residents of these cities, making for a large and varied target audience which affiliates can cater to.