While the future of the restaurant business remains uncertain, there is opportunity for restaurants to reimagine the customer experience while discovering value in new products and services, using data and rethinking their business models. Digital technologies and partnership with a software service provider can bring agility and efficiency, through digitally led solutions. This is more evident in the pandemic, where many restaurants in Cyprus have adapted or adopted digital solutions such as Bolt Food, pivoting towards pickup, direct delivery or delivery through third parties. Technology allows restaurants to meet diners where they are. Moreover, digitally transformed brands such as Pizza Hut Cyprus and McDonalds Cyprus, are already reaping the benefits of digital transformation, a key enabler in weathering the storm brought on by the pandemic.

The webinar is dedicated to presenting the digital transformation opportunities and challenges in the restaurant sector. The webinar is part of the dissemination and exploitation activities of the DineTours Project. The project provides a straightforward process and method that allows creating, uploading and embedding virtual tours in a web-based content management platform. In specific, the Non-Immersive Virtual Reality Web Framework was applied to the restaurant reservations domain with the aim to provide restaurant owners with the functional capabilities needed for easily managing and embedding dynamic virtual tours into a reservation component, while it also allows to update availability. The platform allows customers to virtually experience and choose exactly the table they wish, which offers them the ambience that matches their needs. The DineTours project (EXPLOITATION-STAGE-A /0918/0011–RESTART 2016–2020) receives research funding from the European Regional Development Fund and the Research Promotion Foundation of Cyprus.

More information: http://mdl.frederick.ac.cy/dinetours/