Christmas 2026 bookings for UK restaurants: deposits, pre-orders and the waitlist

For UK restaurants, pubs, cafés and bars. The nollie prices here are for UK bookings; Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have a separate CRM offer.

Christmas 2026 at a glance

Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday. Boxing Day is the Saturday, so its bank holiday moves to Monday 28 December across the UK, and in Scotland the 2nd January holiday moves to Monday 4 January 2027. New Year's Eve is a Thursday. The party Fridays are 4, 11 and 18 December, and 18 December is the last Friday before Christmas.

A Friday Christmas Day turns Christmas Eve into a Thursday and gives you a long weekend straight after. Party demand also bunches. In Dojo Bookings data published on 11 December 2025 (Dojo, a payments company that also sells a booking system), the week commencing 8 December was the most popular for Christmas parties, with 34% of the festive bookings it tracked. This year the same week starts on Monday 7 December.

December is busy, but it is not a guaranteed win. Among the managed groups in the NIQ RSM Hospitality Business Tracker, like-for-like sales in the seven days from 22 December 2025 rose 4.8% for pubs, fell 1.1% for restaurants and fell 15.5% for bars. NIQ also found that the share of consumers attending a Christmas work party fell from 24% in 2024 to 21% in 2025. Fewer parties means each one you take is worth protecting. Decide now which dates you open, which sittings run a fixed menu, and which tables need money up front.

When should you take a deposit for a Christmas booking?

Take one where a no-show would cost you most: large tables, the Friday and Saturday nights in December, Christmas Eve, and any sitting that serves a fixed menu. Set the rule by date and party size rather than by guest, publish it on the booking page, and say what happens to the money if plans change. Leave a midweek table for two alone, or you add friction where the risk is small.

The rule works best when the guest meets it at the moment of booking. A deposit request that arrives by email two days later gets ignored, forwarded to someone else in the office, or argued about. On the booking page it is simply part of saying yes.

Guests say a deposit changes their behaviour, too. Research by Zonal with CGA by NIQ, a survey of more than 5,000 British adults published in November 2024, found that "14% of guests have not honoured bookings or not cancelled in advance", and that 21% said the risk of losing a deposit would make them more likely to honour a booking. Zonal sells hospitality technology, so read those figures as a supplier's research.

nollie takes a deposit or card hold on the bookings that need one, and flags serial no-shows before you confirm. Guest records also group serial no-shows into their own segment, so you know who to ask for a deposit whatever the date. See how it works on the booking system page.

Deposit, card hold or full prepayment?

Each guarantee trades protection against friction. Match it to the booking rather than applying one rule to the whole of December.

Christmas booking guarantees compared

Guarantee	How it works	Best for	Watch for
Card hold	Card details secure the table; a charge applies only under your stated no-show terms	Small tables on busy dates	A charge can still fail on the night if the card has changed
Deposit	A part-payment taken when the guest books and taken off the final bill	Groups, party nights and peak dates	Refunds and reduced numbers need a clear, published rule
Full prepayment	The set menu, or the whole booking, is paid in advance	Fixed-menu sittings and Christmas Day	Changes after payment, and keeping all of it if the guest cancels (see the CMA guidance below)

A card hold can be light-touch. ASK Italian's Christmas page, for example, asks tables of eight or more to pre-authorise £5 a head, and takes no payment unless the party does not turn up or does not cancel or rearrange 24 hours beforehand. Whatever you ask for, a fixed amount per person is easier to explain than a percentage: the guest can work it out before they book, and your team can quote it on the phone.

Whatever you choose, tell the guest before they pay. The CMA's guidance on unfair contract terms says a genuine deposit "may legitimately be kept in full as long as it operates as a binding reservation and the trader makes clear to the consumer at the earliest opportunity that a deposit is required, and the precise circumstances in which it would be non-refundable". The same guidance adds that such a deposit "will not normally be more than a small percentage of the price", and goes on: "A larger prepayment is more likely to be unfair as it may amount to a disguised penalty." It also says a cancellation charge should reflect "any ability of the business to mitigate (reduce) any loss following the cancellation, for instance by finding another customer". This is not legal advice: have your own terms checked, and keep them clear and easy to find.

How do you run pre-orders for a Christmas party?

Ask for one menu choice per named guest, with allergies and dietary needs recorded against each name, and set a firm cut-off about seven to ten days before the date. Send the kitchen one sheet per table the day before. A cut-off and a published rule for late changes mean the order the kitchen prepares is the order that sits down.

A simple run that holds up in December:

1. Sell the menu with the booking. Put the set menu and its price on the booking page, not in a follow-up email. In nollie, the set menu, the arrival drink or the cake can be offered as an extra at the moment of booking, while the table is already saying yes.
2. Capture allergens up front. nollie's booking page captures the 14 allergens, and a saved dietary preference stays on the guest record for the next visit.
3. Ask for choices with the confirmation. One form or reply per table, with every guest named. Chase once, a few days before the cut-off.
4. Lock numbers at the cut-off. Decide in advance how you charge when a party of twelve becomes nine after that point, and say so in the policy.
5. Print by table. The kitchen and floor work from the same sheet, so the vegan main reaches the right seat.

What should your Christmas booking policy say?

Keep it short enough to read on a phone, and put it where the guest books. This outline lists what to cover; it is not legal advice, so have your final wording checked:

• Deposit: £[amount] per person for tables of [number] or more, and for every booking on [dates]. Taken when you book and taken off your final bill.
• Changes to numbers: tell us by [cut-off] to change your party size.
• Cancellation: cancel by [notice period] for a full refund of your deposit. After that, the deposit is kept.
• Pre-orders: menu choices and dietary needs for each guest by [date].
• Late arrival: we hold your table for [minutes] minutes.
• Service charge: state whether a service charge applies and, if it does, how much.

If a service charge is compulsory, include it in the prices you show. The CMA's price transparency guidance lists "mandatory cover or service charges at a restaurant" among the mandatory charges that a headline price should include.

What do you do when a December night is full?

Keep taking names. Put walk-ins on a waitlist at the door, and when a cancellation or an early finish frees a table, offer it to the next party that fits. In nollie you add the guest at the door, and when a matching table is ready you tap Notify and nollie sends the guest a table offer. A table you refill is revenue you would otherwise have lost.

A full diary in December is the best guest list you will have all year. Every Christmas booking adds to the guest record, so the office party booker and the family who came for a festive lunch are there when January goes quiet. nollie's email campaigns report in bookings, covers and revenue, so you can see which January send brought people back rather than guessing.

Seasonal campaigns to your own guests already work. From Simon, The Clifton Sausage, Bristol:

"A recent Easter awareness campaign alone drove over 50 covers into the restaurant: clear, measurable ROI against a very modest cost."

A Christmas bookings checklist for October

• Now: choose the dates and party sizes that need a deposit, and the sittings that run a fixed menu.
• Early October: publish the Christmas menus and the booking policy on your booking page.
• Mid October: email last year's party bookers and big-table guests who have agreed to hear from you, before they book elsewhere. nollie builds the segment of guests who book for six or more from your bookings.
• November: send pre-order requests with each confirmation, and chase before the cut-off.
• December: run the waitlist every night, and refill cancelled tables from it.
• January: send your first campaign of the year to December's guests who have agreed to hear from you.

If you are choosing or changing a booking system before Christmas, compare the options in our UK restaurant booking systems guide, check our UK pricing, and read the switching guide for how a move works.