Tracking: OpenTable links to opentable.com

For sites that send guests to opentable.com with ordinary links, and nothing else.

The problem this solves

When a guest follows an ordinary link (<a href="https://www.opentable.com/...">) to OpenTable, OpenTable can't report the booking back to your page:

• Links that open a new tab are opened by browsers without any connection back to your page, for security.
• Links that open in the same tab take the guest away from your page altogether.

So the booking has to be recorded on OpenTable's own booking pages instead, and the visitor's ID has to be carried there from your site.

How it works

1. On your site, the tracking script adds the visitor's ID (daid) and the current page (dref) to a link to OpenTable at the moment it's clicked. Links aren't changed when the page loads, only when they're clicked.
2. OpenTable's Google Tag Manager integration runs your GTM container inside a hidden frame on OpenTable's booking pages (on cdn.otstatic.com). OpenTable passes the visitor's ID and page into that frame.
3. A second Distil tag runs in that frame, picks up the visitor's ID, and records the booking when OpenTable reports it.

Requirements

• Your site uses Google Tag Manager.
• Your container is connected to OpenTable's GTM integration. In OpenTable for Restaurants: Integrations → Social → Google Tag Manager, then enter your container ID (GTM-XXXXXXX).
• Your site books only through links. If it also uses OpenTable's widget, a button or an embedded booking page, use OpenTable: widget, button or embedded booking page instead, and replace the links.

Setup

This setup is available from Distil as a ready-made Google Tag Manager import file, including the tag for OpenTable's frame (see Installing with Google Tag Manager).

1. On your site: change the distil.load(...) line of the tracking script tag to:

distil.load("YOUR_ACCOUNT_KEY", { trackOpenTable: true });

If that line already has options, for example trackSevenRooms: true, keep them: { trackOpenTable: true, trackSevenRooms: true }.

Then change each of its triggers to fire on Some events, with the condition Page Hostname · does not contain · otstatic.com. This keeps the site's tag out of OpenTable's frame, which gets its own tag (below).

2. In OpenTable's frame: create a second tag:

Why two triggers: OpenTable sends ot-availability-pageview when its booking page loads, together with the visitor's ID from the link, so Distil normally loads then. But OpenTable's frame waits for the guest's answer to OpenTable's own cookie prompt. A guest who answers it after that event would be missed, so ot-reservation-made gives the tag a second chance: when it loads then, Distil picks up the visitor's ID and the booking from what OpenTable has already sent, and records the booking once. If the guest declines OpenTable's cookies, nothing is recorded.

Don't add your own tag that sends bookings on OpenTable's ot-reservation-made event. The OpenTable tag above already records them, and a second tag would send each booking again.

Checking it

1. Click a link to OpenTable on your site. OpenTable's address should contain daid= and dref=.
2. Complete a test booking (and cancel it afterwards). A request containing "Value":"book-reservation" is sent from the OpenTable tab.

OpenTable's pages load the published version of your container, so this check only works after publishing.