Secure Bookings

Secure bookings

When you book a table through Now Book It, you're booking with the restaurant, not with us. We build and run the booking page on their behalf, which is why the footer says your data is secured by the restaurant and our booking platform.

Your details belong to the venue you chose. That's the whole model, and it's the part most booking platforms get wrong.

How we secure your booking data

Your details go to the restaurant you booked with, and nowhere else.

When you confirm a booking, your name, contact details, and anything you've told the venue (a birthday, an allergy, a preferred table) go to that restaurant so they can look after you. They hold that information. We store and protect it for them.

We don't sell your data, and we don't advertise against it.

It's worth knowing how the alternative works, because it's the norm in this industry and it's rarely explained on the booking page.

The large marketplace platforms earn money twice. They charge the restaurant a fee for every diner who walks in, including the regulars who were always coming. Then they treat your dining history as an asset of their own. Where you eat, how often, what you spend, and increasingly what you order gets assembled into a profile that follows you from venue to venue. That profile is used to market other restaurants to you, and it's shared with advertising and ad tech partners for their own marketing purposes. Several of those platforms now run advertising businesses built directly on diner data, selling brands access to people based on where and how they dine.

You're not the customer in that arrangement. You're the inventory.

Now Book It doesn't sell, rent, or trade your details. We don't build a cross-venue profile of your dining habits, we don't run an ad network, and we don't use your booking to market anything to you. There is no diner mailing list sitting behind the booking page, because there's no business model that needs one. Restaurants pay us for software. That's it.

One booking doesn't open the door to every venue.

Thousands of hospitality venues use Now Book It, but they can't see each other's guests. Booking at a wine bar in Adelaide doesn't put you on a list that a restaurant in Melbourne can look up. Each venue sees its own bookings only.

Your information is encrypted, both in transit and at rest.

Every booking page runs over an encrypted connection, and your details are encrypted in storage. Access is limited to authorised staff at the venue you booked with. If a restaurant takes a deposit or holds a card against your booking, payments are handled by a certified payment provider, and full card numbers are never stored by Now Book It or the restaurant.

Our security controls are built to align with the SOC 2 framework.

SOC 2 is the standard used to assess how a technology platform handles security, availability, and confidentiality. We've designed our controls, access management, monitoring, and incident response to align with its requirements, and we hold ourselves to them across every market we operate in.

Your data stays in your part of the world.

Where your information is stored depends on where the restaurant operates, not on where our head office sits.

• Bookings with venues in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia are hosted in Australia.
• Bookings with Canadian venues are stored in Canada.
• Bookings with United States venues are stored in the United States.

Data isn't shuffled between regions for convenience. A booking made with a Canadian restaurant stays in Canada.

If a venue emails you, that's the venue.

Some restaurants send their own confirmations, reminders, or offers. That's their relationship with you as their guest, and every message includes a way to opt out. It doesn't come from us, and it doesn't go beyond them.

How we enable faster bookings

On the details step of a booking, you'll see the option to Remember me for faster reservations. Here's exactly what that does.

It saves your details to your browser, on your device.

Tick the box and your name, email, and phone number are stored locally in the browser you're using. There's no account to create, no password, and no diner profile held on our side. It works the same way your browser already remembers a shipping address.

Next time, the form is already filled in.

Visit the booking page of any venue using Now Book It on that same device and browser, and your details appear ready to go. Check they're right, and confirm. That's it.

No restaurant sees your details until you book with them.

This is the important bit. Saved details sit in your browser and stay there. Browsing a venue's booking page, changing your mind, or closing the tab halfway through sends nothing to that restaurant. A venue only receives your information at the moment you complete a booking with them.

It stays on the device you saved it on.

Because your details live in your browser, they don't follow you to your phone, your laptop, or a different browser. That's by design. If you're on a shared or public computer, leave the box unticked.

You can clear it whenever you like.

Untick the box on your next booking to stop saving your details, or clear your browsing data to remove them entirely. Removing them from your browser has no effect on bookings you've already made, which stay with the restaurants you made them with.

Still have a question?

Bookings you've already made are held by the restaurant, so they're the right people to talk to about changing, cancelling, or removing your details. For anything about the booking page itself, read our privacy policy or get in touch.