More reviews and more online reach: how TablePlay activates guests after playing

A satisfied guest isn't a reviewer yet. And an enjoyable evening doesn't automatically result in an Instagram tag, WhatsApp share or online recommendation. The guest has to take action for that.

That's exactly why the moment at which you ask for something is so important. TablePlay creates several natural moments at which a guest is already actively using their phone.

A quiz has finished. The final score appears. The table has won. A scoreboard is updated. And it's exactly at such a moment that the next step can be offered: leave a review, share your result, challenge someone.

As a result, marketing changes from something that only needs to happen after the visit into part of the experience itself.

Actively asking for reviews works

There's particularly relevant scientific support for the review feature. A large-scale natural experiment involving hotels on TripAdvisor examined the effect of actively requesting reviews. Hotels that systematically asked for reviews saw the number of reviews rise by around 34%.

That's a particularly strong benchmark for TablePlay. Because TablePlay has something that a regular review email often doesn't have: the guest is still on location and has just finished an activity. This means the review moment can directly follow on from the experience.

Why 50% more reviews is a strong scenario

If systematically asking for reviews alone can already cause an increase of around a third in existing research, it's interesting to explore what happens when such a request is built directly into an interactive guest experience. That's why we use up to 50% more review volume as our strong TablePlay scenario.

That figure is not an existing TablePlay measurement result. It's an ambitious scenario, based on a mechanism whose effect from actively requesting reviews has already been convincingly demonstrated.

Not just more reviews, but possibly also better reviews

There's something else interesting. In the same hotel study, it wasn't just the number of reviews that increased. The average rating also improved.

This may be partly because actively requesting reviews reaches a broader group of guests. Without a request, it's relatively often people with a strong personal motivation, positive or negative, who write a review. By actively asking satisfied guests at the right moment, people who would otherwise remain silent can also share their experience.

TablePlay can add an extra element to this: the review request follows an interactive moment that is ideally positive, social and enjoyable.

Why it doesn't say "30% more stars" here

We deliberately don't present this as 30% more stars. Review sites almost always work with a maximum score, which makes such a percentage misleading: at 4.2 out of 5 stars, adding 30% is mathematically impossible.

The better measure is the whole picture: review volume, the development of the average rating, and the proportion of positive reviews. That's why we talk about review performance rather than review score.

A score is also shareable content

TablePlay creates a second digital effect. A normal restaurant evening doesn't always produce something people spontaneously want to share. But this does:

• "We're number one tonight."
• "18 out of 20 in the music quiz."
• "Table 7 beat table 12."
• "Can you beat our score?"

Research into digital products has convincingly shown that integrating social sharing mechanisms into the user experience can significantly increase the spread of content.

That doesn't mean every restaurant automatically goes viral. It does mean that making sharing part of the experience can be far more powerful than simply displaying social media icons somewhere at the bottom of a website.

From social sharing to local reach

For a restaurant, these actions are interesting because the guest themselves becomes the sender. A shared TablePlay score potentially contains the name of the restaurant, the match, the score, the winner, and perhaps an invitation to beat the score. This creates organic visibility around the location.

With tournaments, this effect can also repeat itself. Not just one photo during the meal, but multiple moments: start, interim standings, final, winner.

That's why, in our strong scenario, we calculate up to 30% more social actions and reach. This can include shares, tags, mentions, forwarded scores, profile visits and interactions around tournaments.

One game, three digital effects

This means a single TablePlay session can ultimately deliver three things: more reviews, stronger review performance and more social engagement.

And this happens without a staff member having to hand out business cards afterwards or approach guests again weeks later. At that moment, the guest is already exactly where you want them to be: satisfied, engaged and with their phone in hand.