Food & Hospitality Week wrapped up in Sydney just over two weeks, and if you weren’t there at RESTECH, here’s what you need to know.
Adam Gifford, RESTECH lead at National Media, said technology has become one of the most important investment categories across hospitality and foodservice.
“Operators are facing rising costs, labour challenges and increasing customer expectations. Technology is playing a critical role in helping businesses improve productivity, deliver better guest experiences and make smarter decisions.”
What this tells us is that smart reservation management isn’t a back-office function anymore — it’s where revenue is won or lost, and the gap between operators who understand that and those who don’t is widening fast.
Now Book It was on the floor in the RESTECH section, connecting with venues from Sydney, Canberra, Queensland, and Victoria. Restaurant owners and managers made the trip from across the country — including regional operators leaving their towns for the first time in years — to get across the full hospitality tech landscape under one roof.
The standout moment was a 45-minute panel on the Tech Stage: Smart Bookings: AI in Reservation Management. Now Book It’s Chief Revenue Officer Paddy McCrory joined Karl Schlothauer (VP, YCK Laneways), Sian Potsig (Operations Director, Edition Hospitality), and Sarah Franklyn (Head of Partnerships, Impact Data) for a session that skipped the marketing language and got into the decisions operators actually need to make.
Here are the five things that stood out — and what each one means for your venue.
1. Your reservation system should be doing the thinking, not just the filing
For years, a booking system did one thing: held a table. The phone rang, someone wrote a name in a book, a section got reserved. That era is over.
AI-powered reservation platforms are now doing something fundamentally different — they’re anticipating. Phone agents, SMS integrations, and in-app messaging handle enquiries, confirm bookings, and manage last-minute changes without pulling your team off the floor. The real shift, though, is operational.
As Sian Potsig put it during the session, the opportunity is in flipping the floor plan before service — using AI-gathered booking data to inform allergy management, seating configurations, and staffing before the first cover arrives. That’s not possible when your reservation system is just a booking form.
The question for your platform: “Is this giving me intelligence I can act on before service, or is it just taking names?”
2. Cutting no-shows is table stakes — what happens after is crucial
No-shows and last-minute cancellations drain venue revenue. That’s well established. AI-assisted reservation systems are getting better at reducing them through automated reminders, smarter confirmation flows, and pre-payment prompts that add the right friction at the right moment.
But the conversation pushed further: what happens to the information gathered through AI-assisted bookings once the no-show rate drops? Some platforms are excellent at reducing cancellations. Fewer can tell you that the guest at table six has visited four times, always orders from the set menu, and noted a nut allergy last visit.
The best platforms — and the operators getting the most from them — connect those dots before the guest sits down. Now Book It’s built-in CRM that comes with booking tags and guest notes put that context directly in the hands of your floor staff, so personalisation isn’t a happy accident. It’s a system.
The question for your platform: “What do I actually know about my returning guests before they walk in?”
3. Data export and data ownership are not the same thing
When the panel turned to data ownership, the conversation moved from “AI is exciting” to “AI is consequential.” Most venue operators assume that because they can download a spreadsheet of their guest list, they own that data.
But here are the questions every operator should be asking:
- Who owns the guest data generated through your reservation platform? Is it your venue, or is the platform using it to retarget your guests with competitor promotions?
- What can the platform do with de-identified data? Even anonymised guest behaviour has significant commercial value. Who profits from yours?
- What happens to your data if you switch platforms? Can you leave with everything — or does your guest history stay behind, locked in a system you’re no longer paying for?
Now Book It’s position is unambiguous: venues have exclusive ownership of their guest data, full stop. Your guest list is yours. Your booking history is yours. The behavioural patterns your customers generate belong to your business — not to be used to retarget guests elsewhere, not to train platform AI on your dime, and not to disappear when your subscription does.
That’s not standard practice across the industry, but it is here at Now Book It.
4. The guest journey now starts before they even think to search
One of the more forward-looking ideas explored on stage: the customer journey no longer starts where it used to. AI is beginning to prompt bookings before the guest has even thought to look. Imagine a prompt that reads: “I see you have dinner in your diary with John on Friday — want me to find a restaurant with a quiet table?”
That’s not far in the future. It’s a near-term reality reservation platforms are already positioning for. The venues that benefit will be the ones already in the system — with profiles, with reviews, with booking availability surfaced to AI agents in real time.
Discovery, booking, pre-arrival communication, arrival, and repeat visitation: AI is touching every stage. The operators on stage were clear that the human element — real personalisation, genuine hospitality — still matters most at the table. But everything leading up to that moment is increasingly mediated by technology.
The question to ask your platform: “Am I showing up in the discovery layer, or am I only visible once someone already knows to look for me?”
5. The data that matters most isn't what brings a guest in — it's what brings them back
Towards the end of the session, the panel shared what’s on their wishlists for reservation management going forward. Several themes came up repeatedly:
- Real-time demand forecasting connected to rostering, so staffing decisions reflect actual anticipated covers rather than last week’s gut feel
- Guest profiles that travel across owned venues within a group, so loyal customers are recognised at every property
- Pre-arrival revenue from drinks packages, dietary requests, and occasion upsells that convert before the guest arrives and reduce pressure on the floor
- Data on repeat visitation rates by booking channel — so operators can see which platforms actually bring guests back, not just through the door once
That last one matters more than most operators realise. Getting a first booking is marketing. Getting the same guest back three, four, five times is a business model.
The question to ask your platform: “Can I see which booking channels generate repeat visits — not just first-time covers?”
What these insights from Food & Hospitality Week 2026 mean for your venue — and your reservations
AI in reservation management isn’t a future-state conversation anymore. The decisions you make about your booking platform in the next 12 months will shape your guest relationships — and your revenue — for years beyond that.
The operators doing this well aren’t necessarily the biggest groups or the most tech-forward teams. They’re the ones asking the right questions: “does this platform give me the intelligence I need to run a better business” — and, critically, “who does the data from my business actually belong to?”
Now Book It was built by people who’ve worked in hospitality, and that shapes every decision we make — including giving venues complete, exclusive ownership of their guest data. Trusted by over 11,000 hospitality venues across Australia, we’re here to help you set up every service for success.