Six-figure cheques to switch reservation platform tell you what your guest book is worth.

In August 2026 the Boston Globe reported on the signing bonuses reservation platforms were offering Boston restaurants to switch.

Reservation platforms have paid restaurants to switch for as long as I’ve been in the business. But the size of the cheque has changed, and that tells you what your guest book is worth to them.

Last week the Boston Globe went round the city’s restaurants and asked what the platforms were offering to win their business. One restaurateur said they had been offered six-figure signing bonuses to switch. Another described cold emails from SevenRooms, Resy and Tock that came down to an offer to write a cheque, sized to cover whatever it cost to get them out of their existing contract. A third said he watches other groups move and wonders whether a bonus decided it.

Covering switching costs isn’t new. The platforms I’ve worked on ran a version of it for years, a competitor swap out. Pick up the notice period on the old contract or give the first three months free. It costs a few hundred pounds, and it pays back inside the first year on the subscription alone.

A six-figure cheque isn’t the same model. On OpenTable one of the operators in the piece put the discovery fee at a dollar to a dollar fifty a booking, on top of a monthly subscription. Nobody pays six figures just for bookings. The cost to the platform is being paid back elsewhere.

Pajo Bruich, whose group runs O Ya and Hojoko, said: “It’s less about the reservations, and it’s all about the data.” Polly Ho at Maple & Ash asked who the guest relationship actually belongs to, then answered her own question. With some platforms it belongs to them, and the restaurant is a fulfilment mechanism for the marketplace. That’s the question I asked in a post in May. And here’s the answer, from an operator’s mouth, in a city newspaper.

Look at who owns the platforms making the offers. OpenTable is Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG). Resy, and since this month Tock, is American Express, which has agreed to buy TheFork. SevenRooms is DoorDash. Each of those owners runs a business that gets more valuable the more it knows about where people spend, when, with whom, on what, and how much. A restaurant’s guest book plugs straight into that.

The Globe asked about data sharing with those owners and partners. OpenTable said it passes card partners aggregated insights, not individual diner data. Resy pointed to guest experience benefits and gave no specifics.

None of that means an operator should turn the money down. Jared Sadoian at Cambridge Street Hospitality said if independents can benefit from big companies fighting each other, take the win. He’s right. But take it knowing what they’re buying. Three months’ fees buys a subscriber. Six figures buys a guest history for whoever owns the platform.

So before signing anything with a bonus attached, ask two questions. What does the company that owns this platform get to see and do? And what happens to my guest book when I want to leave?