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By Aaron McDade
News Fellow
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Restaurant reservations for Valentine's Day across the U.S. are about 30 percent higher this year than in 2021, according to data from restaurant reservation website OpenTable that was shared with Newsweek.
The number of reservations this year is the second-highest of the last four years, trailing only the pre-pandemic Valentine's Day of 2020, according to the data. This year's reservations are 30 percent higher than last year and 15 percent higher than 2019, but still about 20 percent below 2020, according to a spokesperson from OpenTable.
The rise in reservations comes as many areas of the country are considering the removal of pandemic-related restrictions like mask mandates as COVID cases have dropped since the peak of the Omicron variant in January, Newsweek previously reported. Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey and Oregon have lifted school mask mandates, with California set to ease restrictions this week, following the lead of New York.
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New Mexico and Oregon saw the biggest spikes in restaurant reservations for individual states, jumping over 382 percent and 247 percent, respectively, according to the data. Idaho and Vermont are the only states with fewer reservations than in 2021, with drops of 1.4 percent and 37.5 percent.
"We're excited to see this momentum leading up to what has traditionally been one of the biggest dining days of the year for restaurants," said Susan Lee, chief growth officer at OpenTable, in a statement.
The company also analyzed data for the weekend leading up to Valentine's Day, as it fell on a Monday this year, compared to a Sunday last year, and found that reservations from February 11 to 13 were 96 percent higher this year than last year.
The restaurant industry has been forced to adapt to COVID restrictions, a prime example of which started in the summer of 2020 when New York City established programs to allow for increased outdoor seating, according to Restaurant Dive, an online publication about the industry.
The program has saved an estimated 100,000 jobs in the food service industry, and about 80 percent of restaurant owners in a recent New York City Hospitality Alliance survey said they would likely have to lay off workers if the program is not extended, according to Restaurant Dive.
Over 90 percent of a group of more than 700 restaurant owners in New York City said in the survey that outdoor dining was "very important" for the survival of their businesses over the past two years, and said it would also be "very important" for the future of their businesses, Restaurant Dive added.
Last week, the city council heard a proposal to make the outdoor dining program permanent, which would include restaurants paying for an outdoor dining license, and officials pledged to be more strict about regulations than they were during the pandemic, when only 22 fines were issued out of over 4,000 violations, the New York Daily News reported.
This is a developing story that will be updated as more information becomes available.
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