Published on in Vol 5, No 1 (2013):

Who's Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance

Who's Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance

Who's Not Coming to Dinner? Evaluating Trends in Online Restaurant Reservations for Outbreak Surveillance

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The objective of this study is to evaluate whether trends in online restaurant table reservations can be used as an early indicator for a disease outbreak. We monitored table availability using OpenTable; an online restaurant table reservation site for cities in the USA and Mexico. We searched for available tables for lunch between 12-3:30pm and dinner between 6-10:30pm. Using time series analysis methods, we elucidated and compared the time series data of table availabilities to data collected for various disease outbreaks.