Restaurant Reservation System for Qatar — built around WhatsApp
Mawidi takes Friday-brunch, Ramadan-iftar, and weekend reservations directly through WhatsApp — confirms via voice, holds the table with a deposit on Mada / Apple Pay / KNET, sends reminders, and stops walk-in tables sitting empty.
The Friday-brunch problem
Restaurants in Qatar lose more revenue to no-shows than to any other operational gap. The pattern is consistent: a customer books a peak slot on Thursday for Friday brunch, doesn't confirm, doesn't show, and your team can't fill the table from the walk-in queue fast enough.
The fix isn't reminder emails (they get ignored) or asking customers to call back (they won't). The fix is a small refundable deposit collected at booking, on a payment method they actually use — Mada, Apple Pay, KNET. Mawidi does this entirely through WhatsApp, in the same conversation as the booking itself.
Sample math — typical Doha mid-size restaurant
- Friday brunch covers/week (typical Doha mid-size)
- 300
- Avg. cover value
- QAR 180
- Current no-show rate (industry average)
- 12%
- Friday revenue lost to no-shows per year
- QAR 336,960
- With Mawidi deposit-protected booking
- ↓ to ~3%
- Recovered revenue (Year 1)
- ≈ QAR 252,720
Numbers are illustrative. The ROI calculator runs your specific covers, average value, and no-show rate.
What Mawidi does for restaurants
WhatsApp-first reservations
Customers book the table through the channel they already use. No app to download, no website form — just a WhatsApp message. AI handles party size, date, time, dietary notes, and back-and-forth in Arabic or English.
Deposit-protected bookings (Mada, Apple Pay, KNET)
For prime slots — Friday brunch, Ramadan iftar, weekend dinner — Mawidi sends a payment link via WhatsApp. Customer holds the table with a small refundable deposit. No-show rate typically drops from 12%+ to under 3%.
After-hours + Ramadan schedules
Most reservation requests in Qatar come after 9pm or during the suhoor/iftar windows. Mawidi handles them all in real time — no missed calls, no WhatsApp piling up overnight.
Reminders + one-tap reschedule
Automated reminder 24 hours and 2 hours before. Customers reschedule with one tap — no phone tag with the host stand.
Waitlist + table-fill broadcast
When a cancellation opens a prime slot, Mawidi messages the cancellation waitlist instantly. Slots that used to go empty fill within minutes.
Per-shift, per-section analytics
No-show rate by day part, deposit-collection rate, average party size, peak booking-request hours. Owner digest by email weekly.
Related
Frequently asked questions
- Do customers actually pay a deposit to book a table?
- Yes — when the deposit ask comes from WhatsApp on a Mada or Apple Pay link, the friction is roughly zero. Restaurants we've onboarded in Doha see 75–85% of customers pay the deposit on prime slots (Friday brunch, weekend dinner, Ramadan iftar). For non-prime slots most restaurants skip the deposit step entirely — the system supports both.
- What happens during Ramadan?
- Mawidi knows the prayer windows and the iftar/suhoor demand curve. Booking flows adapt automatically — iftar bookings cluster between Maghrib and an hour after, suhoor between 1am and 3am. Both windows are when customers are actively messaging, and the AI handles them in real time without anyone at the host stand.
- Can it handle private parties and large groups?
- Yes. For parties over a configurable threshold (say 8+ guests), Mawidi escalates to your manager via WhatsApp for confirmation instead of auto-booking. You set the rule once.
- Does it integrate with our existing POS or booking platform?
- Mawidi integrates with the major POS and reservation systems used by restaurants in Qatar (Foodics, NAR, OpenTable for GCC, and others). If you're on Google Calendar for reservations, that works natively too. The onboarding team handles the integration setup in under a week.
- What languages does it speak?
- Khaleeji Arabic and English — natively, switching mid-conversation if the customer does. This matters in Qatar where a Qatari customer might open in Arabic and switch to English when checking the menu, while an expat opens in English. The AI handles both without missing a beat.
- How quickly can we go live?
- A single-location restaurant is typically live in 3–5 days: discovery call, POS/calendar integration, customisation of the booking flow for your menu and slot rules, then soft launch on WhatsApp. Multi-location groups take 1–2 weeks.
- What does it cost?
- Mawidi pricing scales with monthly reservation volume — starts around QAR 840/month equivalent for restaurants under 200 reservations/month. The full breakdown is on the pricing page; the ROI calculator quantifies it against your specific covers and no-show rate.
See it run on a Doha restaurant's actual reservation flow
20-minute demo. We'll show Mawidi taking a real Friday-brunch booking — Arabic, then English, deposit collected via Mada, reminder fired — end-to-end.