How to stop no-shows costing your restaurant revenue

An empty table you could have filled: no-shows cost hospitality businesses revenue on a structural basis. 15% of all Dutch restaurant reservations end without a cancellation or a visit, according to the 2024 Restaurant Monitor by BookDinners, based on over 1,250 respondents (De RestaurantKrant, 2024). Yet most businesses only react once it's too late. The fix isn't a single measure, it's an escalating sequence: confirm first, add a deposit only if needed, and invoice on repeat offenses.

Key takeaways

• 15% of Dutch restaurant reservations are no-shows, according to the BookDinners Restaurant Monitor 2024 (De RestaurantKrant, 2024).
• 62% of hospitality entrepreneurs saw no-shows increase, against just 5% who saw a decrease (KHN member survey, 2019).
• A 10 euro per person deposit brought the no-show rate at restaurant Nota Blu in Wateringen down from 30% to 3% within two months (Entree Magazine, 2026).
• The right measure depends on your booking volume and guest profile: go too strict too soon and you lose goodwill, wait too long and you lose revenue.

What no-shows actually cost a hospitality business (and why it isn't an incident)

Four empty seats in a 40-seat restaurant equal 10% of a day's revenue, Café Wu in Amsterdam calculated (Entree Magazine, 2026). That's not an incident: the kitchen has already bought ingredients and staff is already scheduled based on the booking count, so a no-show costs twice, in lost revenue and in costs already made.

This is not a new problem either. A KHN survey among its members found 62% saw no-shows increase, against only 5% who reported a decrease (KHN, 2019). Guests who book online tend to no-show more often than guests who book by phone: an online booking apparently feels less binding than a phone call with a staff member. That gap is exactly why the first step, confirming, pays off so much.

At a business with multiple locations, that gap compounds. If each location handles confirmation differently, one site ends up with a no-show rate of a few percent while another runs at double that, with no clear underlying reason. Often it turns out one shift lead calls to confirm as routine and another doesn't, rather than the guest profile actually being different.

Step 1: confirm, why a phone call or automated reminder already solves a lot

Restaurant Onglet in Maastricht calls around twenty reservations a day, roughly thirty minutes of work, and catches one to two no-shows before service even starts (Entree Magazine, 2026). Basiliek in Harderwijk calls guests 24 hours ahead instead, leaving time to resell a freed-up table.

Confirming is the lightest measure in the sequence: no deposit, no risk of guests feeling distrusted. You simply ask for a confirmation, and guests who can't make it often say so themselves once reminded by phone or message. For businesses with moderate booking volume, this alone is often enough to cut most no-shows.

Step 2: deposits, when a prepayment does and doesn't make sense

At Nota Blu in Wateringen, the no-show rate dropped from 30% to 3% after the owner introduced a 10 euro per person deposit two months after opening (Entree Magazine, 2026). Les Deux in Maastricht charges the same 10 euros, but only on Saturdays, the busiest night of the week, and saw no-shows on that day nearly disappear. De Treeswijkhoeve in Waalre goes further with 50 euros per person, matched to a higher average bill.

Still, deposits aren't a cure-all. The Restaurant Monitor 2024 found that a deposit actually helps only 8% of guests follow through on a reservation, while that same deposit stops 43% of guests from booking at all (De RestaurantKrant, 2024). The individual success stories are real, but they mostly apply to businesses under heavy no-show pressure with guests already committed to booking a special night out. For a casual, walk-in-heavy spot, that same deposit can scare off potential guests before they've even reserved.

Step 3: invoicing anyway, the line between strict and unwelcoming

Basiliek in Harderwijk sends an invoice when a guest cancels within 24 hours of the reservation, because the kitchen has already bought and prepped by then (Entree Magazine, 2026). It's the heaviest measure in the sequence, and the one that fits repeat behavior best: be lenient the first time, invoice the second.

The line between strict and unwelcoming sits in communication, not in the amount. State your cancellation policy clearly upfront, at the time of booking, in the confirmation email and optionally on your website, and a guest experiences a later invoice as something they already agreed to. Communicate that policy only after the bill lands, and it feels like a penalty instead, which costs you the guest for good, even if you were technically right.

Which measure fits your business

Booking volume, guest type and season together determine which step in the sequence you need. On weekends, especially Friday and Saturday nights, demand for tables often already outstrips supply. Those peak moments are exactly when a deposit is easiest to justify: the risk of turning away a spontaneous guest weighs less than the cost of an empty table on the busiest night of the week.

A hospitality entrepreneur running both a casual café and a fine-dining restaurant under one flag shouldn't apply one policy to both. The café runs on spontaneous, phone and walk-in bookings, where a short confirmation is enough. The restaurant works with fixed reservation slots and a higher average spend, where a deposit pays off, especially on weekends. Same owner, two different measures, based on who's actually booking.

How automated reservation confirmations and reminders take this off your hands

Manually calling twenty reservations a day takes time most hospitality businesses don't structurally have. Most of step 1, confirming, doesn't need to be manual either: an automatic confirmation right after booking and a reminder a day ahead already catch most of the non-committal online bookings, without a staff member picking up the phone.

In Horecaflix you set up reservations and the guest communication around them centrally, and apply that same setup consistently across every location, instead of each site running its own calling routine or ad-hoc app reminder. Change the confirmation text, the timing of the reminder or the cancellation policy, and it updates for every linked location at once, without briefing each site separately. That keeps the lightest measure, confirming, structurally in place, while deposits and invoicing stay in reserve for the businesses or moments that actually need them.

A practical plan to start tomorrow

Start by measuring: how many of your reservations over the past month were genuine no-shows, without a cancellation? Without that number, you don't know if you have a structural problem or a handful of outliers around one busy weekend.

Next, set up an automatic confirmation and reminder for every online booking. Decide, moment by moment rather than for the whole business at once, when a deposit makes sense: only on Friday and Saturday, say, or only for groups above a certain size. Lock in your cancellation policy, including the point at which you invoice anyway, upfront in the confirmation email, not after something has already gone wrong.

Review again after a trial period of a few weeks: has the no-show rate dropped, and did you lose guests who saw the deposit as a barrier? If you run multiple locations, compare that number across sites too: a location that lags usually points to a step in the sequence that isn't being applied consistently there yet. You can always adjust, as long as you communicate the change upfront. Not sure where to start? Get in touch with Horecaflix and we'll help you work out the approach that fits your booking volume.