How to Announce Holiday Clinic Closures Without Losing Bookings
On 22 December, Smile & Skin Clinic puts a card on its Facebook page: "Closed December 24 to January 3. Merry Christmas from all of us!" It gets forty hearts and a few "Merry Christmas din po, Doc!"
Then the break starts.
On the 26th, Mr Cruz, home from Dubai until the 6th, messages to ask if he can get a cleaning before he flies back. Nobody reads it until the 4th. On the 28th, Google Maps tells Ms Reyes the clinic is open, so she goes. The shutter's down. That same evening Mr Lim gets a reminder text for his check-up tomorrow, the 29th. He booked it in June, at his last cleaning, and nobody went back through the book when the holiday dates were decided.
None of that will ever show up as a lost booking. The card told people the clinic was closed, which most of them could have guessed. It didn't tell anyone how to get an appointment, and that's the part that costs you.
The short version
- Decide the season's closure dates now, from the government's holiday proclamations, and block them in your booking system before you announce anything.
- Every announcement says four things: the days you're closed, the day you're back, how to book now, and what to do if something can't wait.
- Text every patient who is booked into the closure or due during it. A Facebook post isn't the same as telling them.
- Keep taking bookings while you're closed, for the days after you reopen.
- Set Google's special hours for a short closure. For seven days or more, Google says to mark the profile temporarily closed, so plan to reopen it yourself.
- Plan the first week back before you leave.
For the closure you don't get to plan, there's a separate guide to rescheduling patients when a typhoon hits.
Where a closure actually loses bookings
You don't lose bookings on the days you're closed. Nobody expected to be seen on Christmas Day. You lose them in the weeks before, during the break itself, and in the week you reopen.
| When | What goes missing | What stops it |
|---|---|---|
| The weeks before | Patients who wanted to come in before the break and found out too late to get a slot | Announcing early, with your last open day in the message |
| During the break | Enquiries nobody answers, a Google listing that says you're open, a booking system still offering closed days | An away message with your reopening date, booking open for after the break, Google hours set |
| After you reopen | A backlog you can't clear in a day, and patients whose recall or adjustment fell inside the gap | Patients moved before you leave, and slots held for the first two days back |
Most clinics put up the Facebook post and stop there, which covers part of the first row and none of the other two.
Start with the dates
You can't announce what you haven't decided. So the first job is a written list of the days you'll close, settled once for the season instead of one holiday at a time in the staff group chat.
The holidays come from a presidential proclamation each year. For 2026 it's Proclamation No. 1006 (PTV News), and for 2027 it's No. 1427 (Inquirer). These are the dates most clinics will be deciding about over the next six months:
| Date | Holiday | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Sun 1 Nov 2026 | All Saints' Day | Special non-working |
| Mon 2 Nov 2026 | All Souls' Day | Special non-working |
| Mon 16 to Wed 18 Nov 2026 | ASEAN Summit, Metro Manila only | Special non-working |
| Mon 30 Nov 2026 | Bonifacio Day | Regular |
| Tue 8 Dec 2026 | Feast of the Immaculate Conception | Special non-working |
| Thu 24 Dec 2026 | Christmas Eve | Special non-working |
| Fri 25 Dec 2026 | Christmas Day | Regular |
| Wed 30 Dec 2026 | Rizal Day | Regular |
| Thu 31 Dec 2026 | Last Day of the Year | Special non-working |
| Fri 1 Jan 2027 | New Year's Day | Regular |
| Thu 25 and Fri 26 Mar 2027 | Maundy Thursday and Good Friday | Regular |
| Sat 27 Mar 2027 | Black Saturday | Special non-working |
The Metro Manila days weren't on the original list. They came under a separate proclamation, No. 1447, announced in late September (SunStar), less than two months ahead. A Manila clinic that books check-ups six months out could already have had patients on those days. So whenever a new proclamation comes out, open the book that same day and see who's on it.
And "special non-working" doesn't mean you have to close. For a private clinic it's your call, and part of that call is payroll. Under DOLE's pay rules for 2026, staff who work a special non-working day get an extra 30 percent for their first eight hours, and staff who work a regular holiday get 200 percent of their daily wage for the first eight. An unworked regular holiday is still paid. An unworked special day is "no work, no pay" unless your clinic's own policy says otherwise (Grant Thornton's summary of Labor Advisory No. 12-25).
So 24 and 31 December are worth deciding on purpose. Before you do, look at last year's book for those two days. If most of the patients cancelled or never came, you have your answer.
In the examples below, Smile & Skin Clinic is closed from Thursday 24 December and reopens on Monday 4 January. Write yours down the same way, with the first closed day, the first open day, and the weekday next to both.
What every closure message has to say
The card at the top said one thing. A notice that keeps your bookings says four:
- The days you're closed, with the weekdays. "Dec 24 to Jan 3" has people counting on their fingers. "Thursday 24 December to Sunday 3 January" doesn't.
- The day you're back. This is the line that's missing most often, and it's the one the patient actually needs. "Closed until the 3rd" leaves them guessing whether you open on the 4th.
- How to book now, for the days before the break and the days after it. A patient who books on the 27th for the 5th is a booking. A patient who's only told "we're closed" goes looking for a clinic that isn't.
- What to do if something can't wait. There's a section on this further down.
Leave one out and the announcement creates more messages than it saves, because every patient who needs the missing line has to ask for it.
The announcement, week by week
A single post the day before won't carry all that. For Christmas, start in late November.
| When | What to do | Who it reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Four weeks before | Block the dates in your booking system. Go through the book and move anyone already booked into them. Put a sign up at the front desk. Post the dates on Facebook. Set your Google hours | Patients already booked, and everyone who comes in |
| Two to three weeks before | Text patients who are due during the break: braces adjustments, post-op checks, recalls. Post your last open days before the break | Patients who'd otherwise fall into the gap |
| Two days before | Pin the closure post. Set up the Page's Messenger away message. Tape a notice to the door. Check that no reminder is about to go out for a closed day | Anyone looking for you during the break |
| During the break | Let the away message and your booking system carry it. If you've promised someone will check the inbox, they check it every day | New enquiries |
| The day before you reopen | Post that you're open tomorrow. Mark the Google profile open again if you closed it. Switch the away message off | Patients who've been waiting |
Block the dates before you post them. If your booking system doesn't know about the closure, it keeps offering 28 December to anyone who asks, and the patient gets told one thing by your post and another by your calendar.
Say it at the front desk
The cheapest announcement you have is Jen saying it out loud. From late November, every patient who books a follow-up should hear "Sarado po kami Dec 24 to Jan 3, balik po kami Jan 4" before they leave. They're picking their next date right then anyway. The sign at the counter covers the ones she forgets.
Text the patients it affects
A Facebook post reaches whoever happens to scroll past it. A patient who is booked into the closure, or due during it, gets a message of their own.
Make it a text. Your Page can only message someone freely for 24 hours after they last wrote to you, so Messenger won't reach a patient who booked in October (why Messenger reminders stopped working). Send each patient their own text, too. A Viber group or group chat of patients shows every member who else goes to your clinic.
A few rules for the texts themselves:
- Stay at or under 160 characters, with straight apostrophes and no peso sign or emoji, so each one bills as a single message. The counted SMS templates explain why.
- Send between 7 AM and 9 PM. The NTC keeps broadcast texts out of the hours after that, and a batch of closure texts looks a lot like one. The send-time guide has the rule.
- Don't ask the patient to reply. A text from a registered sender name can't receive one, so give them a number to call instead.
When the patient is already booked into a closed day, give them a new slot rather than asking when they're free. A patient who's happy with it doesn't have to do anything. 148 characters:
Smile & Skin Clinic: Mr Lim, we're closed Dec 24 to Jan 3. Your check-up on Tue 29 Dec moves to Mon 4 Jan, 10 AM. Can't make it? Call 0917 123 4567.
In Taglish, 154 characters:
Smile & Skin Clinic: Ms Reyes, sarado po kami Dec 24 to Jan 3. Nilipat po namin ang cleaning niyo sa Tue 5 Jan, 2 PM. Di po pwede? Tawag sa 0917 123 4567.
Count your longest patient name before you send these. Put Ms Ma. Cristina Villanueva-Sandoval into the first one and it runs to 177 characters and bills as two.
When the patient is due during the break but not booked, let them choose which side of it. 154 characters:
Smile & Skin Clinic: Mrs Dela Cruz, your braces adjustment is due during our break, Dec 24 to Jan 3. Call 0917 123 4567 to book a time before or after it.
If you send from a registered sender name, like SmileSkin, and your booking link is registered too, a link beats a phone number, because the patient can book at 10 PM without waiting for anyone. From the clinic's own phone, links tend to disappear without an error, so keep the number.
The Facebook post
Post it four weeks out and pin it two days before.
HOLIDAY SCHEDULE
Sarado po ang Smile & Skin Clinic from Thursday 24 December to Sunday 3 January. Balik po kami Monday 4 January.
Gusto niyo magpa-cleaning bago mag-Pasko? Our last open day is Wednesday 23 December. Message us here or call 0917 123 4567 to book.
May appointment po kayo during the break? We'll text you this week with a new schedule, so no need to message us.
You can still message us during the break to book for January.
The second-to-last line saves Jen an afternoon. Leave it out and everyone with a December appointment messages to ask what happens to it.
The Messenger away message
Turn it on in Meta Business Suite before you leave and off when you're back. This version is for a clinic where a person handles the bookings:
Hi po! Holiday break po ang clinic from Dec 24 to Jan 3, and we're back Monday, Jan 4. Para sa January appointments, send us your name and preferred day. Ico-confirm po namin pagbalik namin, in the order we received them. If you have bleeding that won't stop, swelling that affects your breathing or swallowing, or an injury to your face or jaw, please go to the nearest emergency room now.
"In the order we received them" gives the patient a reason to send the request now instead of waiting until you're back.
Google Business Profile lets you set special hours for closures of up to six days in a row. If you'll be closed seven days or more, Google says to mark the business temporarily closed instead (Google Business Profile Help). Smile & Skin's eleven days falls in that second group.
Google's page on marking a business reopened describes it as something the owner does, and says nothing about it happening on its own. So set an alarm for the morning you reopen. A profile still marked closed on 4 January is Ms Reyes's problem in reverse.
Keep booking open while you're closed
Mr Cruz couldn't have come in on the 26th whatever you did. But a slot on Monday the 4th, two days before his flight, was sitting right there.
Switch booking off for the break and you throw that slot away. Leave it running with the closed days blocked, and his message on the 26th turns into a Monday appointment. Otherwise he gets a reply on the 4th, and by then he's probably booked somewhere else.
If a person takes your bookings, the away message above is the next best thing. Requests pile up in order, and the first job on the morning you reopen is confirming them.
Don't let patients fall into the gap
Eleven days is long enough to knock a patient off a schedule. Before the break, sit down with the dentist and go through who's due during it:
- Braces adjustments. Pull them in before the break rather than push them past it. A patient told "after New Year na lang" can easily drift a lot further than that (how braces patients drift).
- Post-op checks and stitches that would land inside the closure.
- Patients mid-treatment, like a root canal between visits or a crown waiting to be fitted.
- Patients with a deadline of their own, like an OFW flying out in early January or an HMO approval that expires.
- Recalls due in late December. Send those in the first half of the month and offer either side of the break. A recall system will flag them if you have one.
The dentist decides who can't wait, and Jen finds them a slot.
If something can't wait
Decide before the break whether a dentist will be on call. If one is, put the number in the away message and on the door. If not, say so plainly, and give the one line that covers the cases nobody should sit on. The American Dental Association lists bleeding that won't stop, swelling that could affect the airway, and trauma involving the facial bones as potentially life threatening. Those patients go to an emergency room, now. That's the last line of the away message above, and your dentist should approve the wording before it goes live. The after-hours guide has more on writing it.
The first week back
Three things land on the morning you reopen: the patients you moved, the requests that came in during the break, and the walk-ins who never saw any of it.
- Don't put every moved patient into the first two days. Spread the routine ones over the first week or two.
- Hold a slot or two on each of the first two days for whoever spent the break with a toothache.
- Answer the backlog oldest first, before the first patient sits down. Someone who's waited eleven days shouldn't also have to wait until lunch.
- Three days in, go back through your list. Anyone you moved who still has no confirmed date gets one more text, and after that goes on the recall list.
You can size the backlog before it arrives. Open Meta Business Suite, scroll back to last year's break, and count the messages that came in while you were closed. That's roughly what'll be waiting for you on the 4th.
Common mistakes
- A card that only says "closed", with no reopening day and no way to book.
- Posting the dates before blocking them, so the booking system keeps selling closed days.
- Moving the patients who were booked and forgetting the ones who were due.
- Leaving reminders running for appointments you never moved, like Mr Lim's "see you tomorrow" on the 28th.
- Using special hours for a break longer than six days, or marking the profile temporarily closed and forgetting to reopen it.
- Switching booking off for the whole break.
- Announcing the closure in a group chat of patients.
- Booking every moved patient into the first day back, the morning that's already going to be your busiest.
Where OtterFlow fits
Software can't pick your dates or decide who can't wait. It can take care of the middle row of that first table, the enquiries that come in while nobody's at the desk.
In a clinic running OtterFlow, the break goes like this:
- The owner blocks 24 December to 3 January in the clinic's availability. Flo, the AI front desk, only offers times that are genuinely open, so it stops offering those days on Messenger and the web chat and offers the first open days after instead.
- One line goes into the knowledge base: closed from the 24th, back on Monday 4 January. When a patient asks "open po kayo sa 28?", Flo answers from that line in English, Taglish or Bisaya, whichever the patient used, and offers a January slot.
- The patient books, gets an SMS confirmation, and gets a reminder before the visit. The confirmation carries a Manage link, so a patient who needs to move the appointment can do it without waiting for anyone to come back.
- Anything Flo can't answer, like whether a sore tooth can wait until the 4th, gets flagged for your team, and anyone on staff can take the conversation over.
It won't choose your dates, move the patients already in the book, call your braces patients or update Google. That's still Jen and the list. If the inbox during the break is the part you dread, see how OtterFlow handles booking.
Other questions
Should we text our whole patient list about the closure?
Text the patients it affects: anyone booked into the break or due during it. Everyone else will find out from the Facebook post, Google and the sign at the desk. A text to every patient you've ever seen is closer to a broadcast, and broadcasts raise consent questions under the Data Privacy Act. The Viber broadcast guide goes through them.
Should someone check the inbox during the break?
Only if the away message says so, and only if that person will actually do it. "We'll reply on 4 January" followed by a reply on the 4th is better than "we'll get back to you soon" followed by eleven days of nothing.
Before your next closure
Pick the next holiday on that list. Write down the days you'll close, block them, and go through the book for anyone already sitting on them. If you'd like to see what Flo would have said to Mr Cruz on the 26th, book a 15-minute call and we'll run it against your own schedule.