Restaurants urged to plan ahead to boost festive bookings

Online booking software provider ResDiary has urged restaurants not to miss out on Christmas bookings by leaving it too late to plan for the festive season.

The Glasgow-headquartered platform, which is used by around 7,100 UK venues, found more than a third (34%) of restaurants who didn’t plan ahead of Christmas were not fully booked during the festive period. This figure almost halved to 18% when venues began their festive planning before August.

The figures were revealed in ResDiary’s latest industry report, Beyond the Booking: Festive Season Success Unwrapped, which was released last week.

The report, which surveyed 61 restaurants across the UK and Ireland, also revealed more than 69% of venues take significantly more revenue during the festive period, with the figure increasing up to 82% for those who have planned before August.

ResDiary chief executive Colin Winning said: “Our findings demonstrate a clear correlation between those putting their festive plans in place before August, in higher booking numbers, and subsequently higher revenue generation.”

He added that restaurants should start promoting their festive offering for 2023 now if they haven’t already done so.

And while implementing plans early can lead to increased bookings and revenue, the report found it can also have other benefits.

Winning added almost 25% of respondents who put plans in place before August said they were fully booked by September. This, he said, gave restaurants more time to reconfigure table plans, implement other seasonal changes to their operations, and ensure staffing and stock levels matched the demand.

He said implementing such measures meant restaurants were "able to focus on providing customers with the best possible experience”.

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