For venues — frequently asked questions

Two paths. The first: we may already have you. TPDR's launch list is curated from the founder's hospitality CRM, which means many premium private dining rooms in Sydney are already pre-populated as draft listings. The second: head to /list-your-venue, type your venue name, and our Google Places integration auto-fills your address, phone, and website. Add your spaces, photos, pricing, and you're live.

Possibly. We have a curated list of around 100 Sydney venues seeded as draft listings (including most hatted restaurants and major hospitality groups). If you're listed, you can claim the listing and receive enquiries directly. Search your venue name on the homepage to check.

Search for your venue, click "Claim this listing", and verify ownership via a confirmation email to the venue's listed business address or via a phone call from our team. The claim flow takes a few minutes.

Until 30 June 2026, any Sydney venue that subscribes becomes a City Founding Member — paying $99 per space per month, with that rate locked for the life of the subscription. No annual hike, no inflation adjustment, no re-pricing. The same offer extends to each new city we launch in, for the first 90 days of TPDR's presence there — that city's first venues to subscribe become their City Founding Members. After a window closes, new sign-ups pay standard rates, but existing Founding Members stay at $99 as long as they remain subscribed.

In Sydney, until 30 June 2026. In each new city we launch into, for the first 90 days of TPDR's presence there. Once a city's window closes, the standard rate applies to new sign-ups in that city — but anyone who subscribed during the window stays on the Founding Member rate for the life of their subscription.

Nothing changes for venues already subscribed as Founding Members — you stay at $99 per space per month. New sign-ups after the window pay standard pricing: $149 per space per month, with a 10% discount available for a 12-month commitment. Cancellation forfeits the lock — if you cancel and resubscribe later, you re-enter at then-current standard rates. So the lock matters.

Not necessarily. Your existing photography is a starting point. If your imagery isn't up to TPDR's standard, we'll let you know and can connect you with a hospitality photographer. Editorial credibility lives in the photography, and we'd rather help you fix imagery than list a venue at a lower quality bar.

For a single-space venue with existing photography and good content, around fifteen minutes. For a multi-space hospitality group with full photo and copy refresh, allow a few days across multiple sessions. The platform saves your progress and you can finish later.

Standard pricing is $149 per space per month, billed monthly. A 12-month commitment brings that to $134.10 per space per month (10% off), billed annually in advance — one upfront payment of $1,609.20 per space for the year. Until 30 June 2026 (Sydney), the Founding Member rate of $99 per space per month is locked for the life of your subscription. Hospitality groups with 20 or more total spaces qualify for a bespoke Hospitality Group rate, negotiated case by case. Across every plan: pay per space, no commission on bookings, ever.

A "space" is a discrete bookable private dining room. The Cellar Room at Bert's Bar & Brasserie is one space. If your venue has two private dining rooms upstairs and a chef's table downstairs, that's three spaces.

Per-space pricing applies regardless of how many spaces a venue has. The model is deliberately flat — easier to communicate and aligned with how diners search (they want a space that fits 24 guests in Surry Hills, not "any room at Bert's").

No. Each space is priced the same regardless of how many spaces a venue or group has. We chose simplicity over volume tiers — every space delivers the same value (one listing, one enquiry routing channel), so every space pays the same rate. The discount that does exist — 10% off for a 12-month commitment — rewards term length, which is something both sides benefit from.

Yes — 10% off standard pricing if you commit to a 12-month term. That's $134.10 per space per month, or $1,609.20 per space for the year. Billed annually upfront — one payment at the start of the term. Available to single venues and hospitality groups. The discount exists because the upfront commitment is genuinely valuable to us: locked revenue, no monthly billing failures, predictable cash flow.

Yes — hospitality groups with 20 or more total spaces across their portfolio qualify for a bespoke Hospitality Group rate, negotiated case by case. Term length, prepay, brand customisation on your group page, and dedicated onboarding support are all on the table. Email hello@theprivatediningroom.com to start that conversation. For smaller groups, the standard 12-month commitment discount applies.

No. Never. The subscription is the entirety of what venues pay TPDR. Bookings, deposits, and revenue stay 100% with the venue.

Because the commission model — used by OpenTable, Resy, and most reservation platforms — creates a structural tension between the platform and the venue. The platform makes more when the venue charges more, which pushes the platform toward booking volume regardless of fit. Our model rewards us for delivering relevant enquiries, full stop. The cleaner alignment is good for both sides.

Listing on TPDR (browsable, searchable, mappable), photo gallery (up to 15 images per space), direct enquiry routing with full diner contact details, a basic ROI dashboard (enquiries received, response time, conversion to bookings), and eligibility for relevant marketing audience segments.

Two things make this less of a risk than it sounds. First, the held-enquiry pathway: even before you subscribe, TPDR routes enquiries to your venue and holds them on your behalf — by the time you're paying, you can already see demand exists. Second, month-to-month subscription has no lock-in — cancel any time. We'd rather have a happy customer who renews voluntarily than one trapped by a contract.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Your listing reverts to the non-subscribed state — you remain discoverable on TPDR, but enquiries flow through the held-enquiry pathway instead of arriving directly. If you'd like to reactivate, the next enquiry that lands for your venue triggers a one-click reactivate flow.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Direct to the email address you've nominated. Each enquiry includes the diner's name, email, phone, date, group size, budget band, occasion, response-needed-by, and any free-text notes. You reply to the diner; we keep a copy of the thread on your dashboard for ROI reporting.

Yes. Name, email, phone, and any business information they've provided. This is structurally enforced by the platform, not a feature we might quietly remove later.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Either. Most venues respond to the diner via their existing email client. The dashboard exists for managing multiple enquiries, tracking conversion, and updating venue / space details.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

If your venue isn't yet subscribed and a diner enquires with you, you see metadata only — date, group size, budget band, occasion, response-needed-by, the diner's first name. Full contact details are released once your first subscription payment confirms.

When a diner enquiries with your venue and you're not yet subscribed, we email you with the enquiry metadata and a one-click subscribe-to-claim link. Click it, complete the Stripe Checkout, and the full enquiry — with the diner's contact details — arrives in your inbox. The first subscription payment activates your listing immediately.

A "held enquiry" is one that came in for a venue that isn't yet subscribed. Held enquiries are kept on the diner's side of the platform; the venue sees metadata only until they subscribe. If no venue claims the enquiry by the diner's stated deadline, the diner receives three alternative venue suggestions, and the original held enquiry is treated as expired.

Date blocks are on the post-launch roadmap. At MVP, the cleanest path is to mark an enquiry as "Not available" in your dashboard and the diner sees that response, with alternative suggestions offered. Calendar / availability integration is a Year-1 build.

Not at MVP launch. Integrations with major reservation platforms are on the roadmap. Your TPDR listing is the source of truth for private dining enquiries specifically; your existing reservation system continues to handle regular reservations.

Same as above — roadmapped, not at MVP.

Editorial credibility first (hats, awards), then profile completeness and responsiveness, then featured-slot placement. Hatted venues always rank above featured-but-uncredentialed venues. The ranking algorithm is documented openly on /how-rankings-work so venues and diners alike can audit it.

You can pay to win a featured slot — a dedicated visibility band on city, suburb, cuisine, or category pages — but a featured slot never moves your venue above a more credentialed competitor in the main organic list. Editorial credibility outranks paid placement, every time.

A featured slot is a dedicated card placement at the top of a city, suburb, cuisine, category, or size-band page. It's additional visibility, separately allocated from organic rankings. Featured slots are won by monthly auction (Smart Bid).

Each month, we run a Vickrey sealed-bid auction for every featured slot. You submit a single maximum bid for the slot you want to win. At close, the highest bidder wins the slot but pays only the second-highest bid plus a $25 increment (or the reserve, if they were the only bidder). The auction is called "Smart Bid" because the bidding strategy is straightforward: bid the most this slot is worth to you, and the auction handles the rest.

Because featured-slot value varies — Christmas season is more competitive than February, Bondi is busier than Penrith. Flat pricing leaves money on the table during high-demand months and creates churn during low-demand months. The auction lets the market set the price each month. Reserve prices ($250 for standard slots, $500 for City Hero) floor our revenue; clearing prices reflect what the market will actually pay.

The minimum bid we accept. $250 for standard slots (suburb, cuisine, category, size-band) and $500 for City Hero slots (the premium homepage placement). Bids below reserve don't win, even if they're the only bid in.

Three premium placements on the city homepage — the most-trafficked surface on TPDR. Sydney's City Hero slots open monthly, with a $500 reserve and competitive bidding from venues who want broad visibility across the whole city.

No. One slot per venue per row. We enforce diversity in the featured band so a well-funded venue can't dominate every position on a single page. You can win multiple slots across different rows (e.g., Suburb featured AND Cuisine featured) simultaneously.

No. Never. The ranking algorithm is structurally arranged so that editorial credibility ranks first, and a featured slot is its own placement band, not a way to move a venue above a more credentialed competitor in the main list.

Hats contribute to your award score, which is a factor in organic ranking. A three-hat venue ranks above a two-hat venue, which ranks above an unrated venue (assuming all else equal). If you don't have hats, profile completeness, response time, and other signals still matter — there's plenty of room to win on the platform without them.

Your award score decreases. Award scores decay annually if not re-won; losing a hat is a more immediate drop, and we adjust your score within the next monthly refresh.

Send us the announcement and we'll update your record within the next refresh cycle. Award sources we currently track include the Good Food Guide, Gourmet Traveller, World's 50 Best, Michelin (where relevant), and major Australian food critic awards.

Yes. Each venue is owned by an organisation; group operations directors can manage every venue, space, billing record, and enquiry pipeline from a single organisation dashboard. The schema supports it natively.

A hospitality group can consolidate billing across all its venues into a single Stripe subscription with line items per space, or hold separate subscriptions per venue. Group dashboards aggregate ROI reporting across the portfolio.

Yes. Organisation-level dashboards show aggregated metrics (total enquiries across the portfolio, response times, conversion, attributed revenue), with the ability to drill into individual venues or spaces.

Brand sponsorship slots — homepage and city-page brand panels, sponsored editorial content, newsletter sponsorship — open to direct-sold partners from Year 2 onwards. Eligible categories are aligned to the TPDR audience: premium hospitality groups, luxury hotels, premium spirits, watch brands, private banks, and similar. Reach out at hello@theprivatediningroom.com if interested in early conversations.

Enquiries received, response time, conversion to confirmed bookings, estimated minimum revenue based on your pricing, attribution back to acquisition source (organic search, featured slot, alternatives email), historical auction clearing prices for slots you could bid on, and audience segment eligibility.

Hire fee + (minimum spend × confirmed party size) per venue's stated pricing, summed across booked enquiries in the reporting window. Venues can optionally report actual booking values for accurate ROI — the dashboard shows both estimated and actual where available.

Every enquiry that arrives via a featured slot impression-and-click chain is tagged with the originating slot ID. The attribution carries through to the booking (when you mark it Won). Your dashboard shows impression → click → enquiry → booking funnels per featured slot, with full ROI calculation.

No. Stay listed wherever else you are. We're not territorial; we win on quality and customer relationship, not on contractual lock-in.

No. Monthly billing, cancel anytime, no minimum term, no exit penalty.

Detail forthcoming; contact hello@theprivatediningroom.com for specifics in the meantime.

Browse the platform; the launch list includes most major hatted venues in Sydney and a growing number of hospitality groups. We don't publish a separate "competitor list" — the platform itself is the answer.

No. The auction is sealed — you see your own bid history and the clearing prices for slots you've participated in, but never other venues' specific bids. You see clearing-price trends (last six months, average, current bid density band) on every slot you could bid on.