Huge decline in diner numbers at restaurants across the country
Durban bookings declined by 56% and the number of diners by a massive 66%
RESTAURANTS in South Africa’s big cities have taken a huge knock in diner numbers this month.
According to Dineplan, a reservation management platform, the number of diners in January 2021 has plummeted by a whopping 60.1% year-on-year.
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The statistics looked at bookings, number of diners, no-shows, cancellations and estimated total revenue lost this January compared to January 2020.
The research is based on restaurants in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban that use Dineplan software to manage their reservations.
Durban’s restaurants took the biggest knock, with bookings declining by 56% and the number of diners by 66%.
Johannesburg saw bookings fall by 51.9% and the number of diners by 58%, while in Cape Town, the number of bookings decreased by 50.9% and diner numbers by 59.9%.
‘This makes sense as diners try to decrease the number of people they socialise with. With the ban on booze, the average spend per head will also have crucially dropped, resulting in a loss of revenue significantly more than the 60% drop in the number of diners,’ said Dineplan.
No-show rates (diners who book and do not pitch) have, however, decreased, ‘suggesting that diners have become more conscious of the hardships faced by restaurants during lockdown.’
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