Following more than eight months of research and development, UAE-based team of Internet-savvy entrepreneurs officially introduced Tawilati – the region's first online restaurant booking gateway at this year's Taste of Dubai.

The site acts as a search engine for some 500 restaurants in the UAE and enables users to make dining arrangements with the click of a mouse.

With the growing number of Internet users in the region standing at more than 70 million – not including the close to 45 million Internet mobile users – and the constantly expanding food and beverage industry, the power team of founders Dr. Ibrahim Baggili – a Cyber Forensics specialist – and Mohamed Al-Marzougy – an Emirati entrepreneur – identified the need for a real-time booking engine that provides information about restaurants.

Drawing inspiration from the user-friendliness of search engine giant Google, Baggili and Al-Marzougy partnered with itrak technologies in the UK and went on to develop Tawilati in early 2011.

Tawilati.com (meaning "my table" in Arabic) is an online gateway dedicated to diners in the Middle East to find, learn about and book restaurants online.

From a diner's view, using Tawilati is as easy as visiting a website, typing in search criteria such as the name of a restaurant, a type of cuisine, a location, etc. and booking their selection online in a matter of seconds. It's free, simple and eliminates the stereotypical run-around of making restaurant reservations.

On the restaurant's end, using the system is as simple as a visit to Facebook with a fully customizable back office that merely requires an Internet connection. Options such as an iPad application for customer surveys allows the restaurant to track all of its past and present diners such as vegetarians or those with food allergies, creating an invaluable method of learning about its clients and even the quality of its staff.