Bar owner’s plea over spate of ‘no-shows’

A BAR owner has pleaded with people to phone up and cancel if they can no longer make their reservation after a spate of no-shows left his venue empty.

Joe Kelly, owner of Chew Valley Distillery, shared a picture – below – of a deserted bar after a number of “last-minute cancellations and no-shows”.

He urged people to give plenty of warning in future if their plans changed and they could not honour their booking.

In full, the post reads: “A picture of what should be a full bar ... Lastminute

cancellations and no-shows hit a small place like this hard.

“Please, please, please give plenty of notice if you can’t make a reservation. It makes such a huge difference.”

A campaign called No More No Shows was launched last July to try to put a stop to the issue of no-shows as hospitality operators revealed it was costing the sector £16bn a year, with between 25 and 50 per cent of online bookings not turning up without warning.

There was a spate of no-shows in Bristol last year during the period in which restaurants could operate, believed to be down to the fact diners were ‘spread booking’ – a new trend whereby people make reservations at multiple restaurants to ensure they have options to choose from, but only intend to honour one of them.

New steakhouse Steak Me Out suffered 16 in one night, equating to around 70 per cent of its total bookings that evening, while highly rated tapas bar Gambas had 30 in one day.