Users Clicking to Book Restaurants in Japan Up 5.8-Fold in a Year; NAVER to Step Up Local Dining Discovery and Reservations
Users Clicking to Book Restaurants in Japan Up 5.8-Fold in a Year; NAVER to Step Up Local Dining Discovery and Reservations
Users Clicking to Book Restaurants in Japan Up 5.8-Fold in a Year; NAVER to Step Up Local Dining Discovery and Reservations
- Users on NAVER Place are clearly moving from discovering local restaurants in Japan to booking them, with the number clicking the Tabelog reservation button up 482% year over year
- Place detail pages now account for 76% of reservation clicks, revealing a pattern of users exploring nearby restaurants while in Japan
- NAVER plans to keep adding bookable local restaurants and is considering a beta test this year that would bring restaurant information in Japan to NAVER Map as well
September 22, 2026
With the number of visitors to Japan surging year after year, NAVER is seeing a sharp rise in users of its service for discovering and booking local restaurants in Japan, which it launched last year in partnership with Tabelog*, Japan’s largest restaurant information platform.
Under the partnership, NAVER Corp. (CEO Choi Soo-yeon) has integrated Tabelog’s data with its Place service, providing information on 750,000 restaurants in major cities across Japan. For some of these restaurants, users can also click through to Tabelog to make a reservation in real time.
*Tabelog: A restaurant search and booking service that offers detailed information on restaurants throughout Japan, including interior shots and photos of the dishes actually served, as well as approximately 85 million firsthand reviews from local users.
Listings for restaurants in Japan on NAVER Place display a “Tabelog Reservation” button that takes users to Tabelog’s booking page. As of August this year, the number of users clicking this button was up approximately 482% from August last year, when the feature first launched.
The data also reveals a seasonal pattern, with demand to discover and book local restaurants surging whenever interest in travel to Japan runs high. Reservation clicks rose 111% month over month in December, around Christmas and winter break, and 50% in May, around Korea’s long holiday weekends.
In the early days of the Tabelog integration, most reservation clicks came from NAVER’s integrated search, but in August, clicks made while browsing Place detail pages accounted for 76% of the total. This suggests that users visiting Japan are actively searching for good restaurants nearby with a genuine intention to dine there, and are following through by trying to book a table.
As user interest in discovering and booking local restaurants in Japan through the Tabelog integration continues to grow, NAVER plans to keep expanding Place listings for local restaurants that include reservation links.
That expansion is already under way. As of September, reservation links were available for about 75,000 local restaurants in Japan, up 12.7% from the start of the year.
NAVER is also in ongoing discussions with various local companies, including Gurunavi, another major restaurant platform in Japan, about integrating additional restaurants so that users can go from discovery all the way to reservation.
In addition, NAVER plans to beta test bringing this restaurant information to NAVER Map before the end of the year. The beta will allow users to explore areas of Japan on NAVER Map just as they do in Korea, view Place information for Tabelog-linked restaurants, and even make reservations at some of them.
NAVER previously introduced a world map feature through the “Labs” section of the NAVER Map app, allowing users to look up places overseas as well as in Korea.
Going forward, travelers will be able to use the familiar NAVER Map even while in Japan to find nearby restaurants, check the details, and go on to make a reservation. This is expected to make it much easier to find great local restaurants.
“As demand for travel to Japan rises, we’re seeing a steadily growing need among users to find local travel information about Japan through NAVER,” said Choi Ji-hoon, Leader of NAVER Place Search. “We will continue to enhance our features for discovering information on local attractions in Japan and making reservations so that, with NAVER alone, people can enjoy a trip to Japan as easily as a trip within Korea.” (End)
