The short answer: set special hours on your Google Business Profile for every public holiday, including the ones where you’re open as normal. Google’s own help says confirming holiday hours “makes it clear to customers that your special hours are accurate”. It’s a few minutes’ work for the whole summer. Closures of a week or more use a different setting, and your website, Facebook page and voicemail need to say the same thing.
The dates to load now
From Employment New Zealand’s official list:
| Holiday | Falls on | Observed |
|---|---|---|
| Labour Day | Monday 26 October 2026 | Monday 26 October |
| Christmas Day | Friday 25 December 2026 | Friday 25 December |
| Boxing Day | Saturday 26 December 2026 | Monday 28 December, or the Saturday for staff who normally work Saturdays |
| New Year’s Day | Friday 1 January 2027 | Friday 1 January |
| Day after New Year’s Day | Saturday 2 January 2027 | Monday 4 January, or the Saturday for staff who normally work Saturdays |
| Waitangi Day | Saturday 6 February 2027 | Monday 8 February, same Saturday rule |
The weekend rule matters for a shop or cafe that trades Saturdays. Employment New Zealand puts it this way: if the employee would normally have worked on the Saturday, the public holiday is observed on the Saturday; if not, it moves to the following Monday. For your opening hours, the practical answer is to set special hours for both the Saturday and the Monday, so nobody has to guess.
Regional anniversary days are separate. Employment New Zealand lists Southland’s 2027 observance as Tuesday 30 March (Easter Tuesday) and Otago’s as Monday 22 March, with a note that Otago has no single easily determined day of local observance. Check what your town actually does.
How to set special hours
Google’s steps, from its Business Profile help:
- Open your Business Profile and choose Edit profile, then Hours.
- Next to Special hours, select the edit icon.
- Choose a date. Google suggests upcoming holidays, and you can add your own.
- Tick Closed, or untick it and enter that day’s opening and closing times. Use “Add hours” for a split day.
- Save.
Special hours are set date by date and your regular hours stay untouched, so do the whole list in one sitting.
Not verified on Google yet? Edits may not show until you are. The profile guide covers verification.
Open as usual? Say so anyway
This is the step people skip. Google’s help: “It’s a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays, even if they’re the same as your regular hours. This makes it clear to customers that your special hours are accurate.”
Think about it from the customer’s side on Labour Day. Your listing says “Open until 5pm”. Is that today’s hours, or the hours of someone who never touches their profile? Confirming the day removes the doubt, and for a cafe, a takeaway or a mechanic, doubt means they go to the place that did confirm.
Closing for a week or more
Many trades and workshops shut for a stretch over Christmas and New Year. Google’s rule: special hours cover being closed “for up to 6 days in a row”. Beyond that, “If your business is closed for 7 or more days in a row, or will be closed for an unknown period of time, you should mark your business as Temporarily closed.”
Put a reminder in your calendar for the day you’re back, because reopening the profile is a manual step. And state the dates in text on your website: “Closed from 5pm Wednesday 23 December, back Monday 11 January” is a sentence a customer, Google and an AI assistant can all read. Those dates are an example; use yours.
Charging a public holiday surcharge?
Some cafes and restaurants add one, and it’s legal, with a condition. The Commerce Commission’s reminder to businesses says that if they choose to add surcharges “they must be clearly disclosed and the reasons for the surcharge accurately described to avoid breaching the Fair Trading Act 1986”. On how: “it must be clearly disclosed, for example, by adding information to their website or placing a sign outside.”
Two practical points follow. A line on your website and your menu page is the easy way to be upfront before people arrive. And check the day really is a public holiday: with Boxing Day 2026 on a Saturday and observed on the Monday, that’s exactly the situation the Commission warns about when it says working out which day is a public holiday can be confusing. More on what a cafe or takeaway site should carry.
Everywhere else your hours live
Google is one copy. The others need to agree with it:
- Your website. Holiday hours as text near the top, not in an image. Google’s guidance for its AI features tells site owners to keep Business Profile information up to date and to make sure important content is available in textual form.
- Your Facebook page. It has its own hours setting, and customers check it. Why the page and the website do different jobs.
- Your voicemail and any booking tool. The places people end up when they can’t reach you.
- Directory listings you’ve claimed over the years.
One master record makes this a ten-minute job instead of a hunt. The method is here, and it’s the same habit that stops AI assistants quoting old hours.
The short version
- Load special hours for Labour Day now, then Christmas through Waitangi Day.
- Confirm the days you’re open as usual, too.
- Closing 7 days or more: plan to mark Temporarily closed, with a calendar reminder to reopen.
- Put the same dates on your website in text, plus any surcharge.
- Match Facebook, voicemail and bookings.
Where we fit
On a LaunchPad site, a change of hours is an email to us: five updates a year are included, and your hours sit in one master record that feeds the visible page and the schema markup together, so they can’t disagree with each other. Your Google Business Profile stays yours to update, using the steps above. $1 a day: $365 + GST a year ($419.75 incl. GST), build free during launch, domain in your name. Search for your business on the home page to see if your site is already built.