Holidays Are Coming: How To Prepare Your Hospitality Team For The Holiday Rush

What's on the menu?

Keep an eye-out for the big red Coca-Cola lorries because make no mistake, the holidays are indeed coming. So is your hospitality team prepared?

It’s the hospitality industry’s busiest time of year – a chance to get more punters through the door and maximise profits in that all-important Q3.

Despite the cost-of-living crisis, it’s set to be a bumper Crimbo for hospitality businesses this year. Research shown on restaurantonline.co.uk shows that early Christmas bookings for this year are up 54% on 2023, with group bookings of 10 or more up 38%. So it’s vital that your business makes the most of the festive season by making sure you and your teams are ready.

As the old adage goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. So we’ve prepared you a bumper sack of tips and tricks to make sure you and your teams are ready for the holiday rush.

Festive forecasting

Chances are you’ll already have been taking early bookings for this Christmas, with parties and large groups getting in early to book a spot.

This should be your starting point for forecasting the season as a whole. When are your busiest days, what shifts will you need the most cover for, when will there be some downtime (if any).

Data from last year shows that four of hospitality’s biggest sales days for 2023 fell in December, so it’s important to look back so you know what to expect going forward. Every venue is different, and you know your customers and your business better than anyone. So review your bookings and stats from last year to see if you can glean any insights.

Were there any days where demand was higher than expected? Were there any issues with stock? Were you caught short staffing-wise at any point? It might be tricky to cast your mind back a whole year, but anything you can learn from last year could prove invaluable when preparing for this year.

And beyond your business, it’s helpful to look at the hospitality sector as a whole. Keep an eye on emerging trends and changing consumer habits to make sure you’re offering punters what they want, and give yourself an edge over the competition.

Data from hospitality research group CGA found that food-lead experiences are on the up, with visits to restaurants and food-focused pubs up by 4% and 1% respectively over Christmas 2023. There was also a shift from late-night visits, with 57% of consumers saying they went out for relaxed or quiet drinks last Christmas – compared to 30% who went out for a special occasion. Think about how your venue could cater to these changing habits to make the most of the holiday season.

Stay flexible

Making sure you have a fully available team for the whole festive period is vital to making the most of it. But when long hours, hectic shifts and missed Christmas festivities start to take their toll, holiday rush burnout can be a real issue.

All of a sudden you can find yourself a few team members short on some of the busiest days of the year, leading to poor customer service and even a drop in profits. But there are ways to tackle this – starting with your shift scheduling.

Our research has shown that 67% of hospitality workers think that more notice of rotas would improve their life. More notice means there can be more flexibility amongst the staff, as people can swap shifts and plan their lives further in advance.

At Christmas this is more important than ever. People want to work, but they also want to be able to enjoy some celebrations of their own. We’ve found that planning shifts three weeks in advance can have a huge impact on your team’s work/life balance, so why not try it this Christmas?

Scheduling software like Planday can help with this, and reduce time spent planning rotas by up to 80%. It takes the headache out of shift scheduling, even at a complex time such as Christmas, so you can focus on more important things. And by getting the Christmas rota set early, your staff can know exactly what is expected of them and when, so they’re better prepared to tackle the festive season.

Top up your training

It’s easy to let staff training take a backseat over the Christmas period, but try to view it as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience. Don’t believe us? Try these top training tips to get your staff up to speed by Christmas:

Find the fun

As well as practical and useful, staff training should also be fun. Give your staff some motivation to get stuck in by making the courses interactive and interesting. Create some friendly competition between trainees, and offer rewards to the highest performer or best team.

Get everyone involved

Rather than delivering top-down training, think about getting an experienced staff member – or someone who already has the skills – to deliver the session instead. It will create a friendlier, more engaging experience for the team while giving that team member invaluable training experience.

Spread out the skills

It’s all hands on deck over the holiday rush, so what better time to diversify the skills within your team? Food hygiene training for the front of house team, customer service training for those in the kitchen... giving your staff a wider set of skills creates a more rounded, fully functional team that can help each other out if needed.

Think about upskilling

Our Shift Towards Retention Whitepaper showed that 45% of employees feel they don’t have a clear career progression path in their current role. Use this Christmas to change that – offer the chance for certain employees to step up in their role with extra training and increased responsibility. They’ll thank you with more commitment, while taking some of the pressure off you.

Keep communicating

With so much going on over Christmas, it’s easy to get caught up in the rush and forget about the fundamentals – like communication. But making sure your team is fully in the loop with what’s going on and what’s planned is vital to keeping everything on track.

Nowhere is this more important than shift scheduling. When planning distributing rotas, make sure you have clear channels of communication for you and your staff, so they’re able to raise any concerns quickly – and get a response in good time.

WhatsApp groups can work well for this, but try to keep groups small and single-issue, so people’s questions or responses don’t get lost in the chatter. An even better solution is scheduling software from Planday, which makes communicating with your staff quick, easy and direct.

It gives your teams a central point where they can view their shifts, take on extra ones or arrange to swap. All without reams of WhatsApp messages, emails flying everywhere and constant juggling by management and team leaders.

What’s more, the built-in messaging feature makes it easy to get information to your whole team at once. Business announcements, operational changes, team meetings… everything can be communicated at the touch of a button.

Gift-wrapped motivation

The holiday rush can be a brutal few weeks for your staff, so anything you can do to keep people motivated and morale high will go a long way.

This could be as simple as remembering to recognise and reward your teams after a shift. Call out specific employees who went above and beyond during their shift, and make some time for a round of recognition during team meetings each week.

And if you can, a little something to go along with the praise is always good. It could be a bottle of wine to take home, a voucher to buy themselves a treat, a free meal from the kitchen. Anything to show that their hard work has been seen, valued and appreciated.

Being part of a well-oiled, high-performance team is another great motivator. Run team building exercises before the rush really starts, such as games, full team training sessions or away days, to make sure everyone is working well together and pushing towards the same goal. Then try to keep those bonds up during the rush, with things like Secret Santa and planning for a January Christmas party.

Prepare to go out and smash it

Chances are you’ll have already started your Christmas planning for this year. But it goes beyond just rotas and stock planning – it’s about making sure your people are ready, willing and able to tackle the season head-on.

Make sure they know exactly what to expect, what’s expected of them, and that they’ll be listened to if they raise something or voice a concern. Happy, motivated, fully prepared teams make for happy, fully satisfied customers, so make like Father Christmas and get prepping for Crimbo early.

And for happy teams all year round, we’ve created the Handbook to Happiness, a handy guide packed with tips, tricks and advice for happy hospitality teams. Download your free copy today.