Earn Points on Restaurant Reservations using Dimmi/Qantas Restaurants/Velocity OpenTable

Next time you are eating out and about to pick up the phone to make a reservation, consider making a reservation via Dimmi, Qantas Restaurants, or Velocity OpenTable instead. This allows you to earn some points on your restaurant booking. There are no additional booking fees either! In fact, in some cases the points you earn from the reservation may be worth more than the points you’d earn on your final bill.

Qantas and Dimmi should have access to book at the exact same restaurants. I believe this is because Qantas draws from Dimmi’s database. Velocity Open Table, however, will have a potentially different list of restaurants.

The amount of points earned varies depending on which website you use to make a booking, as each of them award points differently.

Generally speaking, the types of restaurants you’ll find on these reservation systems are mid-priced to expensive places. You usually won’t find the cheaper restaurants (<$20/head). Understandable, as I’d assume there’d be some commission payment involved from the restaurant to the website.

Ignoring promotional events, this is how you’ll want to make your reservations to maximise points earned:

• Use Qantas Restaurants if booking for more than 4 people.
• Use Dimmi if booking for less than 4 people
• If booking for 4 people, you decide!
• Book on Velocity OpenTable where the restaurant cannot be booked via Dimmi or Qantas Restaurants

The reasons for the above are due to how the points are awarded:

• Qantas Restaurants: 100 Qantas Points per diner
• Dimmi: 1000 Dimmi points per booking, 1000 points after answering a short survey about your dining experience
  • For context, 10k Dimmi points can be redeemed for a $20 Restaurant voucher at a select list of restaurants on Dimmi
• Velocity Dining: 300 Velocity Points per booking

Examples of some notable restaurants which can be booked in Sydney are:

• Velocity: Hurricane’s Grill Darling Harbour
• Dimmi/Qantas: Criniti’s

.. and frankly, there are actually far too many restaurants that can be booked, so I think it’s best you just have a look yourself!

Be aware that you can in most cases probably combine this booking with an Entertainment Book Voucher. However, it is very possible the restaurant may state “excludes other promotions”, which might exclude use of an Entertainment Book voucher. You can always try though!

It is also possible to obtain further additional discount by purchasing Best Restaurant or Good Food Gift Cards to pay for your bill. I’ll elaborate on this in another post!

If you find one of these restaurants on Groupon, Scoopon, or Living Social, it is more likely that one of the T&Cs of the voucher is that there may be an extra charge if booking via Dimmi/Qantas. Here’s an example of one, Groupon for Harbour Street Restaurant, Wollongong, NSW. The wording is as follows:

Surcharge of $10 per person applies for dimmi bookings

I’ve personally never tried this before, but if I ever did (whether deliberately or not), I’d probably ask them to simply cancel the booking which would result in no loss to them, and just mean I don’t earn extra points that I shouldn’t really have been entitled to. Yes, a bit naughty.

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