By Andrew Norton, co-founder, Creventa. Published 7 July 2026.
Over 2 million festive dishes were ordered through Creventa at Christmas 2025, across party nights, gala dinners, group lunches and ticketed events at hotels, restaurants, stadiums and country houses. That order volume is a window into how festive booking behaviour actually works. Here is what the data says, alongside the industry numbers every operator should know.
The industry backdrop
Pre-booked sales now account for 32% of festive revenue, up from 18% in 2019, and pre-booked guests spend around £54 per head against £33 for walk-ins (Simon Dodd, Young’s CEO, Propel Multi-Club Conference). The festive season is no longer about being busy; it is about being bookable and pre-ordered.
What Creventa venues saw at Christmas 2025
Over 2 million festive dishes ordered. Across party nights, gala dinners, group lunches and ticketed events at hotels, restaurants, stadiums and country houses.
Guests pre-order about two weeks after being invited. The average gap between a guest receiving their branded invitation and submitting their menu choices was around two weeks, which is why inviting guests in early November works so well for December events.
99.2% of guests responded to pre-order invitations. With three automatic reminders doing the chasing, virtually every guest submitted their own choices, with no spreadsheets and no venue follow-up calls.
2.1% of festive guests declared an allergy. At festive volume that is thousands of guests whose allergies were captured against their name and flagged automatically on every kitchen report and place card, rather than sitting in an email thread.
Shared party nights ran at up to 700 guests. Joiner nights, where dozens of separate group bookings share one evening, were consolidated into single seating plans and kitchen reports at up to 700 covers.
Wet spend: a 251% uplift for venues using festive drink pre-orders, as tables chose bottles and packages in advance rather than ordering under pressure on the night.
What this means for your 2026 season
Open bookings by September, give organisers self-service access, invite guest pre-orders in early November with automatic reminders, and let the reports build themselves. The venues that follow this pattern, like The Parmar Collection and Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, describe Christmas as their smoothest trading period rather than their hardest.
See the full venue Christmas planning timeline or how Creventa runs the festive season.