“In the area of mobile, there is just tremendous opportunity to enhance the end-to-end experience in both the accommodation business as well as the restaurant business by leveraging mobile as an asset,” Darren Huston, president and CEO of The Priceline Group, has told investors following the accommodation booking giant’s $2.6bn acquisition of OpenTable.

IDEALS: Priceline CEO Darren Huston

“It is still early days, but if you think of the scenarios of paying your cheque at the table or paying for your hotel room without having to go to the waiter or go to the checkout point, those are obvious ideals that we want to look into and to continuously enhance the experience of our mobile products.”

OpenTable, which has been testing mobile payments in San Francisco, has seated more than 125million diners worldwide while one million guests stay in accommodation booked by Priceline every night.