When Quandoo announced it would close on 30 September 2026, most restaurants asked the same first question: can I get my guest list out? The fact that it’s a question at all says a lot about how booking portals work.
This post is about the difference between taking bookings through a portal and taking them on your own website. It’s also about why that difference matters more than the monthly price.
What a portal actually sells you
A booking portal offers something real: visibility. Your restaurant appears in an app and a marketplace, next to hundreds of others, in front of people who are already looking for somewhere to eat.
The price is not only the fee. In most portal setups:
- The guest books with the portal, not with you. The guest books in the portal’s app or on its page, and the “rate your visit” message sends them back there, next to every other restaurant.
- The guest relationship lives on their platform. You see the reservation. The portal keeps the account, the app and the marketing permission.
- You pay per cover, or per booking. Every regular who books through the portal link costs you again, even though they would have come anyway.
- Leaving is hard by design. Exports are partial, slow, or something you have to ask for. That’s fine until the portal changes its prices, its terms, or, as with Quandoo, shuts down.
None of this is sinister. It’s the business model. But you should know which side of it you’re on.
Regulars are not new guests
Most restaurants get a large share of their bookings from people who already know them: regulars, locals, people who came once and came back. Those guests don’t need a marketplace to find you. They search for your name, open your Instagram, or type your website address.
If the “Book a table” button on your own site sends them to a portal, you pay a portal fee for a guest you already had. Over a year that adds up, and so does the loss of your direct contact with your most loyal guests.
What “owning your guests” means in practice
It’s not an abstract principle. It comes down to a few concrete things you can check in any booking system:
- The booking widget sits on your own website, under your name. Guests don’t have to leave for a third-party page to reserve.
- Guests only see your restaurant while they book. No list of competitors next to your booking form, no “you might also like” suggestions.
- You can export your guest list at any time, as a normal file (CSV), yourself, without asking anyone.
- You pay a flat price, so a busy Saturday doesn’t cost more in fees than a quiet Tuesday.
- You can see where bookings come from, so you know whether Instagram, Google or your website brings people in, instead of guessing.
If a system fails several of these, you’re renting your guest list, not owning it.
Do you still need a portal at all?
Sometimes, yes. A new restaurant with no regulars and no search presence may get real value from marketplace visibility at first. Tourist areas can be different too.
But portal visibility and your own booking channel are not either/or. The mistake is to make the portal your only channel, the one on your website, your Google profile and your Instagram bio. Put your own booking link in those places. Treat portals, if you use them, as an extra source of new guests, not as the door every regular has to walk through.
Where your bookings really come from
Once your booking link is your own, you can finally measure. Tablis lets you create a separate booking link for each channel: Google Business Profile, Instagram, Facebook, your website, a QR code on the table card. Reporting then shows which channel each online booking came from. After a few weeks you know, for example, that half your online bookings come from Google Maps and almost none from Facebook. That’s worth knowing before you spend money on either.
How Tablis handles this
Tablis is built around the list above: the booking widget goes on your own website and shows only your restaurant, you can export your guest list as a CSV whenever you want, and you pay one flat monthly price with no per-cover fee.
If you’re moving from Quandoo, we import your guests and reservations for you, free of charge. See how the switch works, or read our moving checklist first.