Across Melbourne, restaurants are noticing a rise in last-minute cancellations and no-shows, sometimes resulting in thousands of dollars of lost revenue.
Publican Scott Connolly recalls with a shudder the time when, on Mother’s Day this year, 45 people didn’t show up to the venue he co-owns, the Orrong Hotel, for their lunch reservation, costing about $5000 in revenue.
Connolly said while it wasn’t crippling, his team would start taking deposits for large bookings from this month through to the Christmas period.Advertisement On one particularly bad July weekend, about five large groups of 15-20 people each did not show up for their reservations at the bar section and several tables of four failed to attend their dining room reservations.After that, the Prince started requiring that groups of eight or more enter credit card information and commit to $50 per person in the case of a cancellation within 24 hours.
Catching COVID is often the cited excuse, but Harker felt a shift in mindset was also causing a rise in change-of-mind cancellations. Despite requiring credit card details for the booking process, Harker said her venue rarely charged people for late cancellations if they called. “[Cancellations are] a new thing we have to deal with, but it’s not unexpected,” Klein said. “The more warning we get, the more we can prepare and offer the table to someone else who might want to dine with us.”