Australia’s biggest restaurant booking website says it’s getting on top of one of the industry’s biggest bug bears - no-shows.

Dimmi yesterday released its annual No Show Report which revealed its partner restaurants had blacklisted 38,000 diners since the option was introduced a year ago.

It claims the blacklisting service has played a big part in a 25 per cent annual drop in no-shows.

The report estimates no-shows cost the Australian restaurant industry about $75m each year.

Dimmi founder Stevan Premutico has set an ambitious goal of eradicating no-shows by 2020, but some in the industry say Dimmi is part of the problem.

Now Book It is a WA company founded by Craig Joel, president of the Catering Institute and national manager of Entertainment Publications Australia.

The Now Book It service runs through the restaurants’ websites rather than its own.

In its release to media today, Dimmi listed the top five excuses for no-shows according to Sydney restaurant owner, Nelly Robinson.

Ms Robinson said the most common excuse was that diners had booked two restaurants and decided on the alternative.

Mr Joel said Dimmi made it too easy for diners to book multiple restaurants on the same night.

Each Dimmi booking cost the restaurant up to $3.

“You can search for a restaurant on Dimmi and it will list 10 other restaurants like it,” Mr Joel said.

“The reality is if they wanted to stop it, they would. They’re a tech company.

“Surely they can have a feature that says, ‘This person’s already booked at another restaurant.’”

Andy Freeman, the owner of Perth’s Varnish on King and The Flour Factory, recently switched from Dimmi to Now Book It.

He said he had not noticed a change in the number of no-shows but it was a more cost-effective service.

Mr Freeman takes credit card details for particularly big bookings at Varnish.

“If a a table of two doesn’t show up it’s not the end of the world,” Mr Freeman said.

“But if a table of 10 doesn’t show up, it’s a problem. We only do 30 covers.”

He said no-shows had knock-on effects throughout restaurants, from customer confusion about empty tables to the cost of wasted goods.

John Parker, the owner of Arthouse and The Standard, uses Dimmi for his online bookings.

He said their no-show statistics were conservative because restaurateurs didn’t have time to log every no-show during service.

If there’s one thing everyone in the industry seems to agree on it’s that no-shows are a question of common courtesy.

If you cannot make a booking - make a call.

“Every Friday or Saturday on the busy nights, we’ll start ringing around and trying to do phone confirmations,” Mr Parker said.

“I’d like to think that these days most people are nice and they just forget.”