This is more of a barrier for legitimate customers than bots. I'm not paying a non-refundable deposit unless I'm absolutely sure my plans will not change (which is...never). A scalper doesn't care because they are anyways going to find a buyer and just pass the costs on to them.

You could require the customer to present the same card before being seated, but I agree that that's making things pretty inconvenient for legitimate customers.

This is now fairly common where I live (Amsterdam) and since COVID I notice it a lot more. Many restaurants have a reservation fee of €10 or €20, sometimes even more. It's flexible enough that you can reschedule till 8 or 12 hours before the reservation and it's deducted as part of the bill. If you are a no show, you forfeit the deposit. Definitely creates a barrier for scalpers because they would have to buy seats and swallow the loss if they can't sell it but if the restaurant is popular enough, then it can still work in the scalper's favour.

Tock and Resy do this as either fully-prepaid, deposit, or card-on-file. The latter two only kick in for reservations canceling less than x hours in advance; policies vary the other.

OpenTable does this. It’s easy and a great suggestion.

> Real customers won't object to that.

They will. Either by bouncing the reservation page and/or by giving a nasty review.

Lots of places do this. At Birdsong you pay for your table and then if you’ve ordered the pairing with the tasting menu and nothing optional it’s a very “sit down, eat, visit the place, leave” experience. Honestly, makes the place feel luxury. Well, it is luxury and the food is great but it makes you feel royal.

That fee would just be passed from the scalper to the buyer of the reservation.

Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues.

The scalper also has to front the money and eat the cost of unsold reservations.

> Yes, but it makes it all the more complicated because the scalper has to figure out how to process the rebate, which opens up all sorts of issues.

Not really. Restaurant charges 50 dollars for reservation, which gets added as credit at bill. Scalper pays the 50 dollars and charges customer 60 dollars for the reservation. Customer gets the 50 dollars from the restaurant. Scalper keeps the 10 dollars of profit. No rebate is needed for the scalper, they already took the customer money with the deposit included.

Now, for unsold reservations, yes, it helps by adding some risk to the scalper.