Tokyo

A number of new information technology-based services have been launched to help prevent no-shows at restaurants in Japan.

A study group set up by the industry ministry recently estimated the domestic eating-out industry’s total losses from no-shows at about 200 billion yen a year.

In the western city of Osaka, Akinobu Shimose, 36, was dumbfounded in August to hear from staff at his Italian restaurant, Marina-tei Honmachi, a group that had reserved 50 seats for that day did not turn up.

For the no-show group, the restaurant had prepared dishes with ingredient costs of about 150,000 yen.

“Besides the guilty feeling from disposing of the dishes, seeing the disappointed restaurant staff was the most painful to me,” Shimose said.

A survey report released by restaurant-booking website TableCheck in November suggested that few no-show customers feel guilty about neglecting their bookings with restaurants.

As the reason for having not showed up at restaurants they had booked with, many respondents in the survey said they only regarded their reservations as tentative, or that they had made bookings simply slip their mind.

In November, Tokyo police arrested a man on suspicion of repeatedly making fake reservations with an “izakaya” Japanese-style bar.

Toreta Inc. and four other firms offering information technology services for restaurants launched a joint initiative to tackle the issue of no-shows in November 2018.

As a result of campaigns to raise consumer awareness of the issue, no-shows this year decreased by around 10 percent from the previous year, according to the tech firms.

“The most common reason for no-shows is that customers forget to cancel reservations,” Toreta President Hitoshi Nakamura said.

Nakamura said his firm's booking website allows restaurants to send booking confirmation emails while enabling customers to cancel reservations with their smartphones.

TableCheck plans to introduce a rating system next fiscal year to allow restaurants to offer extra services to customers with good scores.

Under the system, restaurants will also be able to demand that customers with long records of no-shows provide their credit card information.

“If the previsit inputting of card information becomes common, there wouldn't be any losses from no-shows,” TableCheck President Yu Taniguchi said. “I think such a world will come in five years.”

But there are also concerns that excessive requirements for personal information could alienate customers, industry sources said.

Jiji Press