I'm Australian and will be in the US for the next three weeks including a few days in Chicago. I like interesting restaurants and had hoped to visit Alinea, but of course the tables are snapped up well in advance. It's a similar case at French Laundry where, from what I've read, you need to hammer their phone number months out for your chance. In each case, I can only imagine how many calls they get from hopefuls asking about cancellations and the like. I read a comment from the owner of Alinea saying that they had 3-4 staff dedicated solely to handling reservations; essentially telling people that they were full. Alinea doesn't use OpenTable, and OpenTable is no fun when you're browsing for whatever opening you might get.

Hiking Half Dome at Yosemite now runs a reservation system with limited permits. When I hiked it, it was only weekends but now I believe it's all week. These permits are snapped up in advance. I think Machu Picchu were introducing a daily quota when I was there many years ago. I imagine that over-subscribed places and events would be a growing market too.

In Australia, expiring ("dropping") domains are "caught" at auction. It made me wonder if a specialised service could work for oversubscribed services - putting cancellations out to bid, handling applications for vacancies. Potentially split bidding proceeds between a restaurant/provider, booking engine and a charity if the venue were so inclined.

Anyone know of anything happening in this space? Grant Achatz (Alinea chef) and a sidekick (Nick Kokonas) have apparently worked on a restaurant project where tickets are sold in advance. The Business Week article mentions Kokonas having programmers working on an engine that might operate in this area and take on Open Table. Does the potential go beyond restaurants?

  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_15/b4223098867567.htm
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/dining/05achatz.html