Setting special hours for Waitangi Day, Anzac Day and regional anniversaries

Short answer: use special hours for one-off dates — Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Matariki, Labour Day, your region's anniversary day, or a one-off closure — and leave your regular weekly hours alone the rest of the time. Set them before the date, not on the morning of, since customers checking your profile see whatever is stored right now.

New Zealand's public holiday calendar is unusually layered: some dates apply nationwide, while regional anniversary days apply only to businesses in that particular region. A business with one Auckland site and one in Hamilton needs to treat those regional dates separately, not copy one set of hours across both.

Regular hours vs special hours

Regular hours describe an ordinary week and should only change when your actual pattern changes. Special hours override that pattern for a specific date — Waitangi Day, Christmas, or a training day — and disappear automatically once the date passes, so you don't need to remember to revert them. A longer closure, such as a refurbishment, is better handled with the separate "temporarily closed" status rather than repeated special-hours entries.

National holidays vs regional anniversary days

Waitangi Day, Anzac Day and Matariki apply everywhere. Regional anniversary days do not — a business in Wellington and one in Christchurch will have different anniversary dates, and getting this wrong means a customer in one city might expect the other city's hours. If you operate across Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, it's worth keeping a shared calendar of each region's date, since these shift slightly year to year.

A simple annual calendar

Set aside twenty minutes once a year to note Waitangi Day, Anzac Day, Matariki, Labour Day, Christmas/New Year, and your own region's anniversary day, then schedule special hours for each as the dates approach. Businesses juggling several regions often forget the anniversary day precisely because it isn't a fixed date on the national calendar — put a reminder a fortnight ahead, not on the day.

Keeping this from slipping

Local SEO AI's business profile feature tracks your upcoming public holiday hours and drafts the special-hours update for you to approve — the tool is software that prepares changes, and nothing is published to Google until you confirm it, with live syncing awaiting Google's approval. See our post ideas guide for pairing an hours update with a short post, and pricing, billed in GBP (£).

A five-minute check before each public holiday hours date is far cheaper than a customer turning up to a locked door and leaving a review about it.