Holiday hours and closures: keeping Google and your site right

Short answer: For a single day or a short run of changed hours, use special hours on Google (as of November 2026 Google says special hours cover closures of up to 6 days in a row) and the temporary hours or holiday hours fields in Apple Business. For a closure of a week or more, mark the Google listing temporarily closed, never permanently closed. Then make your website say the same thing, both on the page and in your opening-hours structured data, ideally a fortnight before each bank holiday.

Wrong holiday hours cost more than a missed sale. Someone drives to a closed shop on St Stephen's Day because Google said "Open", and they remember. The fix is a small routine tied to the calendar rather than a scramble the night before.

The 2027 Irish public holidays to set ahead

Citizens Information lists ten public holidays a year. These are its 2027 dates; check the official page before you rely on them.

Holiday	2027 date
New Year's Day	Friday 1 January
St Brigid's Day holiday	Monday 1 February
St Patrick's Day	Wednesday 17 March
Easter Monday	29 March
May bank holiday	Monday 3 May
June bank holiday	Monday 7 June
August bank holiday	Monday 2 August
October bank holiday	Monday 25 October
Christmas Day	Saturday 25 December
St Stephen's Day	Sunday 26 December

Good Friday is not a public holiday, but plenty of businesses change their hours that day, so treat it like one in your planning. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve deserve the same treatment if you close early.

The "before each holiday" checklist

Put a recurring reminder in your calendar two weeks before each date above. When it fires, work through this list in one sitting:

Decide the actual hours. Open, closed, or shortened, and whether delivery, takeaway or click-and-collect run on different hours.
Google Business Profile: add special hours for the day.
Apple Business: add holiday or temporary hours.
Your website: update the visible hours block, any banner, and the structured data.
Booking and ordering tools: block the day in your reservation, appointment or online ordering system so customers can't book a slot you won't honour.
Other listings: Bing Places, Tripadvisor, delivery apps, Facebook page. Each has its own hours field.
The day after: check that special hours expired and normal hours show again.

Fifteen minutes, ten times a year, removes almost every "but Google said you were open" complaint.

Platform by platform

Google Business Profile

Go to your profile, choose Edit profile, then Hours. In "Business hours", select edit next to Special hours. Google often suggests upcoming holidays; select Review to confirm one, or Add a date for a custom day. Tick "Closed" for the whole day, or untick it and enter your hours. You can add more than one set of hours for a day if you close in the afternoon and reopen in the evening.

Three details from Google's help that catch people out:

Confirm holidays even when your hours don't change. Google suggests confirming official holiday hours even if they match your regular hours, so customers can see they're accurate.
Special hours need "Open with main hours". If your profile's hours setting is anything else, special hours won't show.
Overnight hours split at midnight. A set of special hours can't exceed 24 hours, so a late opening that runs past midnight is entered as two sets.

Multi-location businesses can set special hours in bulk through the upload spreadsheet's "Special hours" column.

Temporarily closed on Google

For a renovation, a fortnight's holiday or an off-season closure, use Edit profile → Hours → Temporarily closed. Google's closure help says to use this when you're closed for more than 7 days, for the off-season or indefinitely, and to use special hours for shorter closures. (Google's two help pages word the boundary slightly differently, but the rule of thumb is: under a week, special hours; over a week, temporarily closed.) Google also notes that for broad searches, temporarily closed businesses can rank after open ones, so switch back promptly when you reopen.

Never use "Permanently closed" for a temporary break. It tells everyone the business no longer exists.

Apple Business (Apple Maps)

Apple's guide says the hours on your place card should match the hours on your official website wherever possible. Alongside normal hours, Apple offers optional temporary hours for single days or date ranges, plus holiday open hours and holiday closed hours fields. One quirk: temporary hours describe when you're open, so if you close between 12:00 and 14:00 on a holiday, enter the open periods rather than the gap.

Your own website

Two things to update:

The visible hours. Put a short line above your normal hours ("Closed Monday 3 May, open as usual Tuesday") rather than replacing the whole block, and remove it afterwards.
Structured data. If your site uses LocalBusiness markup, Google's documentation shows how: an OpeningHoursSpecification with opens and closes both set to 00:00, plus validFrom and validThrough dates, describes a closure for that period. Without validFrom and validThrough, hours are read as year-round.

A compact example for the St Patrick's Day closure:

"openingHoursSpecification": {
  "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
  "opens": "00:00",
  "closes": "00:00",
  "validFrom": "2027-03-17",
  "validThrough": "2027-03-17"
}

Your developer can add this beside your normal hours so the visible page and the markup never disagree.

Common mistakes

Editing regular hours instead of special hours. You'll forget to change them back, and Google shows the wrong hours for weeks.
Updating Google but not the website. Apple asks for hours that match your site, and customers check both.
Forgetting the online booking calendar. A closed day that still accepts bookings creates the worst kind of complaint.
Using a permanent closure for a temporary break.
Letting a "temporarily closed" status run on after you reopen.
Ignoring Good Friday and Christmas Eve because they aren't official public holidays.

FAQ

How far in advance can I set special hours on Google?

You can add future dates whenever you like through "Add a date". Two weeks ahead is a sensible habit; it leaves time for the change to appear and for you to check it.

Do I need special hours if I'm open as normal on a bank holiday?

Google suggests confirming holiday hours even when they're unchanged, so customers know the hours shown are accurate.

We close for two weeks every January. Which option should we use?

A closure of more than a week is what Google's "Temporarily closed" status is for. Set a reminder to reopen the listing on your first day back.

Do I need to change the structured data on my website?

If your site already has LocalBusiness markup with opening hours, yes, or the markup will contradict the page. If it has none, update the visible hours and consider adding markup later.

If you want holiday hours on your website, booking calendar and listings to change from one place, tell us which tools you use.