Which holidays should a local service business post on its website?

Start with the days you are actually closed - most owner-operators close Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day at minimum, and many add Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day. You do not need a full calendar of federal holidays; you need the specific days your hours differ from normal, posted a week or two ahead, plus any early-close days like Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.

Do I need to update my Google Business Profile too, or is the website enough?

Do both, and make sure they agree. Google Business Profile's special hours field is what shows in Maps and search results before someone ever clicks through to your site, so it has to be accurate on its own. But your website is the page a customer actually reads for detail - what counts as an emergency, what the after-hours rate is, when you reopen - and a mismatch between the two (site says open, Google says closed, or the reverse) reads as sloppy at exactly the wrong moment.

What should an emergency or 24-hour business say about holiday hours?

Say what actually changes, not just that you are 'still available.' If routine work is paused but you are taking true emergencies, say so and give the number to call, whether an after-hours or holiday rate applies, and roughly how fast you can respond. A vague 24/7 banner left up over a holiday with no on-call staff behind it is the exact promise-you-cannot-back-up problem that costs a business its next review.

RunCabin Blog · For working contractors

Should I post holiday hours and closures on my website?

Q: Should I post holiday hours and closures on my website?

Yes, if you are closing or changing hours for even one day. A homeowner who lands on your site expecting a callback and gets silence over a holiday weekend does not assume you are on vacation - they assume you dropped the ball, and they call the next name on the list. A short, dated notice near the top of your site (and matching your Google Business Profile) takes minutes to add and prevents that.

September 22, 2026 · 8 min read

Short answer: yes, and it takes less time than you think. If your hours change even one day this year - closed Thanksgiving, half-day Christmas Eve, no crew out New Year's Day - the homeowner who lands on your site during that window should not have to guess. A short, dated notice near the top of your homepage, kept in sync with your Google Business Profile, is the whole fix.

This is the exact week owners start thinking about it. Thanksgiving is five weeks out, and the businesses that get burned every year are not the ones with bad hours - they are the ones whose website never says what the hours actually are.

What actually happens when you skip it

A homeowner does not check your hours before they call - they call, and if nobody picks up, they check your website next to see if something is wrong. If the site says nothing about a closure, the silence reads as a business that is not answering, not a business that is closed for the day. Some of those homeowners call the next name on their shortlist. A few leave a review that mentions it, and "called twice, no answer, no info on the website" is a specific, citable complaint that sits on your profile long after the holiday is over.

The reverse problem is just as common: a site that quietly says nothing, so a customer assumes you are open, drives out, and finds a locked door or an unanswered gate code. That costs you the same trust for the opposite reason - not that you were closed, but that your own website did not warn them.

Which holidays actually need a notice

You do not need a full calendar of federal holidays plastered across your homepage. You need the specific days your hours are different from normal, and nothing else. For most owner-operators and small crews, that shortlist is short:

Thanksgiving Day - almost everyone closes; many also take the Friday after.
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - a lot of trades run a half day on the 24th, then close through the 25th, sometimes into the 26th.
New Year's Eve and New Year's Day - same pattern as Christmas for a lot of shops.
Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day - one-day closures, common but not universal.

If you never close for a holiday - some plumbers, HVAC companies, and locksmiths genuinely do not - you still benefit from saying so explicitly rather than leaving the question unanswered. "Open every day of the year, including holidays, for emergency calls" is itself a piece of information a customer is looking for during exactly this window.

Where it belongs on the site

A single line near the top of the homepage - a thin banner or a note right under your phone number - does more work than a paragraph buried in an About page. Say the specific dates, not just "holiday hours apply." Compare:

Weak: "Please note our holiday hours."
Works: "Closed Nov. 26-27 for Thanksgiving. Back to normal hours Nov. 28."

The second version answers the actual question in one glance: is this business open today, and when does that change. Post it about a week or two ahead of the date, and take it down once the normal schedule resumes - a notice that is still up in January reads as neglect, the same way a stale seasonal site does.

Keep your website and Google Business Profile in agreement

Google Business Profile has its own "special hours" field, and it is usually the first thing a customer sees, in Maps or the search results, before they ever click through to your site. Updating it matters on its own. But it is not a substitute for the website notice - Google's field is a couple of clicks (Edit Profile, then Special Hours), with no room for detail, while your website is where you explain what actually changes: whether emergency calls are still answered, whether a holiday rate applies, when routine work picks back up.

The failure mode to avoid is the two disagreeing - Google says closed while the website still shows normal hours, or the other way around. A customer who catches that mismatch does not shrug it off; it reads as a business that is not paying attention to its own listings, which is a strange thing to signal in the same message meant to reassure them. If you want the fuller picture of how the two pieces divide labor the rest of the year, see is a Google Business Profile enough, or do you need a website?

If you take emergency calls anyway

Plumbers, HVAC companies, and other emergency trades have a different problem: routine work is paused, but the phone still has to work for a burst pipe on Christmas morning. The mistake here is not silence - it is a vague "24/7 emergency service" banner left up with nothing behind it. If you have covered this ground already for the rest of the year, the same honesty rule applies over the holidays: say what is actually different. A holiday-specific line might read: "Routine service paused Dec. 24-26. True emergencies: call [number] - after-hours rate applies." That is a promise you can keep, worded so the customer knows exactly what they are calling into. For the broader version of this question, see should I advertise 24/7 emergency service on my website?

Why this is usually a five-minute job, or a five-day wait

How fast you can post and remove a holiday notice depends entirely on what kind of site you have. On a DIY builder like Wix or Squarespace, you can do it yourself, but it is one more login and one more task competing with actual paying work in the days before a holiday - which is exactly when owners forget, and exactly why the notice is often still up (or never went up) when it mattered. On a managed provider that edits sites through a support ticket, a change requested the week of Thanksgiving can easily miss the window entirely; you are waiting on someone else's queue for a message that is only useful for a few days.

This is one of the plainer, everyday cases for an AI-editable site. "Add a banner saying we're closed November 26 and 27 for Thanksgiving, back to normal hours the 28th" is a sentence, not a project - typed into RunCabin, it is live on the site in moments, and just as easy to remove the day you reopen. No page builder, no ticket, no waiting on a designer's schedule during the one week everyone else is asking for the same thing.

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