San Francisco-based OpenTable is becoming part of the Priceline Group in a deal announced Friday, sending the share price of OpenTable stock up 50% in morning trading, to $104. Priceline agreed to pay $103 per share, or $2.6 billion for the restaurant reservations company, expanding their family of travel brands into the dining world. Priceline CEO Darren Huston called the deal a "natural extension" of what the company already does day to day.

Priceline Group now owns Booking.com, Kayak, Agoda, and rentalcars.com. In adding OpenTable to the mix, Priceline hopes to be able to cross-promote its brands and add dining options to the array of services they already offer to travelers.

OpenTable remains the biggest player in the world of online restaurant reservations in the U.S., though as of last year their growth appeared to be slowing significantly as they ran out of new, higher end restaurants in major markets to sign up for their system. Among other competitor sites in the space like UrbanSpoon and SeatMe, Apple is said to be building some integrated restaurant software that would include reservations, waitlist, ordering, and restaurant recommendation functionality.

Priceline plans to expand OpenTable into more international cities, leveraging the offices the company already has in major cities around the world, and they plan to replace OpenTable's proprietary hardware with a cloud-based system, as KPIX reports.

OpenTable's headquarters will remain in San Francisco and remain independently operated.

And now you officially run the risk of William Shatner shouting at you if you miss your reservation without canceling.

[DealBook/NYT]
[CBS/KPIX]