Deciding whether a holiday shutdown is right for you
We’ve not had Halloween or Black Friday yet.
But for many, thoughts have already turned to the biggest holiday of the year.
Christmas is looming on the horizon.
And if you run a small business, you need to make decisions about the holidays sooner rather than later.
One thing you may be considering is whether you should keep operating over the Christmas period.
The alternative is to close up for much of the end of December and reopen in the new year.
This is all part of preparing your business for the busy period ahead.
But what are the considerations you should keep in mind when making this decision?
That’s what we’ll cover in this article, so read on to find out.
Check the dates
The day of the week that the holidays fall on can make a big difference to the ways time off in this period works.
For instance, this year, Christmas Day is on a Wednesday, which means most employees will naturally have that day and the next off as bank holidays.
With that in mind, if your business works a normal Monday-Friday schedule, remaining closed on the Friday can add not one, but three extra days to the time employees have to spend off work with their families and loved ones.
Consider your customers
The next thing to evaluate is what your customers will be doing. Does your business provide a product or service that people are likely to want or need around Christmas? Or are you going to be pushed into the pile of January’s to-do list regardless?
If there’s unlikely to be demand over this period, then staying open could actually lose your business money through staffing and other costs during quiet times.
If you have data from previous years, try to forecast likely demand this year and plan accordingly.
Know your employees
Your workforce is likely a diverse group of people with their own unique lives and situations. But there may still be some trends. If the majority of them have young families, then they are likely to appreciate more time off over the holidays.
Conversely, if they live alone purely to earn as much as they can, then they might not want the business to close when they could be in and making money.
Your employees are likely a mix, but if there are enough people in one situation or another, you may be able to get a good idea of whether you’d have the numbers to stay open with employees who want to be there.
Scout the competition
Of course, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot if all your competitors are open and raking in sales why you’ve shut up shop. You don’t have to follow the crowd, but you should at least factor this into your decision.
This can be a helpful point of reference if your business is relatively new, and you don’t have previous sales records or a lot of experience to guide you. There’s nothing stopping you from popping into a competitor’s store and asking them about their holiday opening hours.
Use other channels
If you do decide to close up for a few days or longer, you may miss out on some customers or queries. You can alleviate this by having other ways for them to get in touch with you beyond your physical premises.
Chatbots, support email addresses, and a great website are all channels through which customers might be happy leaving a query and waiting to hear until the new year. But if there is no way at all to get in touch with you, they might instead look elsewhere.
Everything is different for retail and hospitality!
Throw every consideration above out the window if you work in an industry where Christmas is a peak period!
Retail and hospitality businesses make a significant proportion of their profits over this period, with hospitality reporting a 54% increase in bookings for this year compared to last.
Super Saturday is another new date that has made its way over to the UK from the US, and refers to the final Saturday before Christmas Eve. It has been identified as a prime shopping day and is often when people do their last big grocery shop before the holidays begin.
This year, Super Saturday falls on December 21st and stores can expect to be as busy as ever then.
If you’re part of the retail or hospitality industries, gear up for a busy one, make sure your rota is fully staffed, and be prepared!