How should I handle phone calls when my business closes for the holidays?
Plan it before you close, not after. Update your holiday hours everywhere customers look, record a greeting that says when you reopen, decide which calls are urgent enough to reach someone, and open your calendar for the days you come back. Then, on the first morning back, return every missed call before you take on new work. A closure on its own doesn’t cost you customers. Silence does: a caller who hears nothing about when you’ll be back assumes you won’t call, and keeps dialing down the list.
Before you close
Change your hours where people actually look. Start with your Google Business Profile and your website, then any booking app or other listing you keep. This matters more than it used to, because more of those answers now come from AI. Google confirmed on December 3, 2025 that it was removing the question-and-answer feature from Business Profiles, replacing it through 2026 with a Gemini-powered “Ask Maps” button that answers from reviews, profile data and the business’s own website. Yelp’s assistant, launched in fall 2025, also draws on page info and the business’s website. Stale hours don’t just mislead the person reading them; they get repeated.
Record a holiday greeting with three things: the dates you’re closed, the day you reopen, and what to do in the meantime. For example: “Thanks for calling [business name]. We’re closed for the holidays and reopen on [day and date]. You can book for after we’re back using the link on our Google listing, or leave your name, number and what you need, and we’ll call you the morning we reopen.” Our page on what a voicemail greeting should say covers the details.
Open bookings for the week you’re back. The first days after a holiday tend to fill fast. If your calendar is open online before you leave, the people who call during the closure can claim those slots themselves instead of waiting for a callback.
Decide what counts as urgent
Write it down before the holiday, in a sentence or two. For a plumber or a heating company, an active leak or no heat is urgent; a quote isn’t. For most salons and shops, nothing is urgent enough to interrupt a holiday, and the greeting can say so honestly. A clinic should already have an after-hours instruction for patients; make sure the holiday greeting keeps it.
If some calls are urgent, give them one clear path: an on-call person (rotate it so no one loses the whole holiday), or an answering backup — a human service or an AI receptionist — that takes routine calls, books for after you reopen, and passes only the urgent ones to whoever is on call. If you have no urgent path, don’t imply one. “We can’t respond until [date]” is better than a promised callback that never comes.
The first morning back
Before the doors open, pull every missed call from the phone log, not just the voicemails — many callers hang up without leaving one. Return them in order: urgent first, then anyone who wanted to book, then the rest. Speed matters here. Vendor data published by Quo in 2026 found that 69% of missed calls to small businesses never get a callback within 48 hours, and a longer closure puts your earliest calls past that line by default. See how fast to return a missed call.
Then switch the greeting back and restore your regular hours on Google. A holiday message still playing weeks later is one of the easiest mistakes to make.