Priceline to buy OpenTable for $2.6 billion

Eminent online restaurant reservation service OpenTable is being bought by airline ticket reservation giant Priceline for a whopping US $2.6 biillion. Priceline, which leads the market for flight, hotel and car rental reservations will be able to add restaurant reservations to their menu of services.

I recently had the chance to visit OpenTable's San Francisco offices where I saw first hand the impressive breadth and scope of their operations for web a well as mobile app services. OpenTable's been around since the early days of the Internet as an online reservation service, they also have a massive database of user ratings and reviews spanning close to 15 years and they've branched out into guest management, table mangement and seating, POS integration as well as reports and even mobile payments. Staring local in San Francsico, OpenTable currently serves 5 million diners each month at 31,000 restaurants globally.

Stay tuned for a more comprehensive story on OpenTable as a developer. Priceline owns popular online reservation properties Booking.com, Kayak and RentalCars.com among others.

Source: New York Times