After helping businesspeople and hotel concierges on the West Coast and Central Canada book tables at corporate-calibre restaurants for the past year, a Vancouver-based tech startup is expanding its reservations app to Asia and the U.K.
“We’re a research-driven technology company and Hong Kong is a city renowned as an early adopter of mobile technology, with a concentrated area of hotels and dining rooms,” said iTendr CEO Patrick Malone, adding his business is also targeting London during its expansion.
“To enter into the lucrative U.S. market without examples of success elsewhere is premature.”
New York and San Francisco are next on the list of 250 cities the company plans to eventually expand into.
For now, Malone said the biggest challenge breaking into Hong Kong is adjusting to some of the different business dining customs but “our service will function fairly uniformly in most major cities.”
The app differs from competitors such as San Francisco-based OpenTable (Nasdaq: OPEN) in that it targets the needs of business people who often make last-minute plans, according to Malone.
“OpenTable functions beautifully for retail clients, for people booking four days from now,” he said.
“But the business client has larger parties…so they’re forced to call one venue after another.”
Users enter in their details such as the number of people in the party, the neighbourhood they want to dine in and how much the minimum bill will likely be. They then get instant confirmation once a booking has been secured.
The service is free for corporate bookers, while restaurants pay for access and alerts.
