The Reservation Bot Arms Race

Over the weekend, a Substack called Upstart Media wrote about an AI startup called Spot, which helps a “small but growing number of users” get tough tables with the added benefit of, supposedly, not getting banned by Resy. In recent weeks, there have been any number of posts and stories about techies getting banned from platforms like Resy for using AI bots to secure desirable reservations. (Resy strictly prohibits unauthorized independent third-party scrapers and autonomous booking bots.) Allegedly Spot’s secret to not getting its users banned (or so it claims…) is to remain under the radar of Resy’s bot detector, or as its co-founder Brian Wagner puts it, “giving users as much horsepower as we can, without turning them into abusive ones.” AI assistant startup Instinct’s agents have been guilty of pinging Resy hundreds of times an hour, which gets detected by Resy and can lead to bans on users. “Unapproved automated activity can introduce risks to the platform and compromise a fair reservation experience for diners,” writes a spokesperson for Resy. “As agentic technology evolves, we’ll continue to evaluate opportunities thoughtfully while maintaining the trust and reliability that diners and restaurants expect from Resy.”

Bots have been plaguing reservations for years now. In 2024, the New York State government passed a law (the Restaurant Reservation Anti-Piracy Act) making it illegal for unauthorized third-party platforms (like the group chat #FreeRezy or the app AppointmentTrader) to resell reservations obtained by bots. (Approved gray-market players like Dorsia, though, were free to keep doing business.) Of course, how this would be enforced was a question from the jump. (As was obvious from day one, the answer seems to be: It won’t be.