When do salon clients actually try to book? What the data says

NewGrowth · Updated July 21, 2026 · 5 min read

The direct answer: only 54% of booking attempts happen during opening hours. That's the finding from Phorest's analysis of booking patterns across more than 5,000 salons and spas — roughly 46% of attempts arrive while the salon is closed, with 28% coming in the evening after close and 18% before open. Nearly half of the people trying to give you money are reaching a business that, as far as they can tell, isn't there.

Every salon owner suspects clients call at inconvenient times. The research lets us say how inconvenient — and what happens to those attempts when nothing answers.

The backbone: Phorest's 5,000-salon analysis

Phorest, the salon software company, analyzed booking behavior across more than 5,000 salons and spas on its platform. The pattern that emerged is remarkably lopsided: 54% of booking attempts happen during opening hours. The other ~46% don't. Of that after-hours share, 28% of all attempts land in the evening after close, and 18% arrive before the salon opens in the morning.

The evening dominance tracks with how people actually plan personal care: on the couch, after the kids are down, phone in hand. Nobody schedules their life at 11am on a Tuesday. They do it at 8:40pm — and if your phone rings into the void at 8:40pm, that intent doesn't wait for you to open.

Does anything corroborate that?

Yes — the number isn't a salon-industry quirk. Widely circulated cross-industry figures on online scheduling put the after-hours share of bookings near 40%, which lands in the same range as Phorest's ~46% for salons specifically. Appointment demand simply doesn't respect appointment-business hours.

And the businesses that make after-hours booking possible get paid for it. Zenoti's 2023 beauty-and-wellness benchmark report (a vendor-published study, so weigh it accordingly) found that online booking rate was the strongest predictor of revenue among the metrics it measured — stronger than rebooking rate, retail attach, or anything else. The salons that let clients book when clients want to book are, measurably, the salons that grow.

What happens to those calls without coverage

Without someone answering, every one of those after-hours calls goes to voicemail — and voicemail is where booking intent goes to die. Per Hiya's State of the Call research, more than 80% of callers who reach voicemail hang up without leaving a message. They don't wait for you to open. They call the next salon on the list.

Closed Mondays are open season. Clients don't check your hours before calling — the impulse to book arrives on their schedule, not yours. A salon that closes Mondays isn't closed to demand on Mondays; it's just closed to capturing it. Closed Mondays? Your phone isn't.

Lunch spikes hit while your chairs are full. Even during opening hours, the busiest inbound windows overlap the busiest service windows — clients call on their lunch break, which is precisely when nobody at the salon can grab the phone. "Open" and "answerable" are not the same thing.

Square's tools, useful as they are, don't answer calls. Square Assistant handles texts about existing appointments; the business phone number takes the voicemail. The new client calling at 8:40pm on a Sunday gets nothing — and books elsewhere by 8:45.

What to do with this

1. Minimum: turn on missed call text-back so voicemail-hour callers get something.
2. Better: reduce the no-shows on the bookings you do get, so lost calls hurt less.
3. Actually close the gap: put something on the phone that answers at 8:40pm on Sunday and books the client. That's what we built → Live Square booking requires the Salon or Front Desk plan plus an eligible Square Appointments Plus or Premium account; every plan answers 24/7 and texts your booking link.