Eid, Ramadan and public holidays: how to keep your hours right everywhere

Checked against Google’s Business Profile help pages and the UAE government portal on 10 November 2026.

A customer who finds you closed when Google said open rarely comes back to complain. The fix is the same hours in every place, changed in the same order each time.

Where your hours live

List every place a customer can read them: your Google Business Profile, Instagram and Facebook, your website, your WhatsApp Business profile, your door, and whatever answers your phone or messages. Most owners update two and forget three.

Google: special hours

Google’s help says that to change hours “for holidays or other temporary periods”, you set special hours. They change a short period without touching your regular hours. Google suggests them for up to 6 days in a row, and says to confirm hours for official holidays “even if they match your regular hours”.

Special hours only show if the profile is set to “Open with main hours”.
A set of special hours cannot exceed 24 hours, so hours past midnight are split into two entries.
For 7 or more days in a row, or an unknown length, Google recommends marking the business “Temporarily closed”.
Google reviews changes before they go live, so set them early.

The UAE calendar

u.ae says Islamic holidays “are determined according to moon sighting”, and that its list applies to “both, public and private sectors”. An Eid date is therefore confirmed close to the day. Rather than printing a closing date weeks ahead as fixed, say “closed for Eid, dates to be confirmed”, and update it when the date is announced.

Ramadan is a period, not a holiday

Special hours suit a few days. A month of different hours is a change to your regular hours, which you change back afterwards. Put the day you change them back in your diary now.

The order that works

Decide the dates and hours on paper.
Set Google special hours (or your main hours, for Ramadan).
Update your WhatsApp Business profile, social bios and website.
Change whatever answers for you, if it works from written hours, the same day.
Tell regular customers once, directly.
After the closure, check every place went back.

If your receptionist is a person, hand them the same sheet. If it is software, find out where it reads your hours from before the holiday, not on it.

Belline answers on website chat, the website voice button, WhatsApp and calls forwarded from your number. It answers from the hours, services and policies you give it, takes a booking or callback request and passes it to your team, says it is an AI if somebody asks, and leaves a summary and a transcript of each conversation in your dashboard. It takes requests; your team confirms them. When it does not know, it takes a message instead of guessing. The plans, what each includes and what they cost are on the pricing page and nowhere in this guide, so this guide cannot go out of date when they change.

On hours specifically: Belline’s weekly hours and its closed dates are separate. A closed date means it offers nothing that day and says the business is closed, and the availability screen can add the market’s public holidays as closed dates in one press. A shortened Ramadan timetable is a change to the weekly hours, which you make and reverse yourself.

Where this comes from

Every statement here about Google is from its own help pages, and about UAE holidays from u.ae; both change, so read them for the current version. This guide does not advise on what hours the law requires of your business. Google is a trademark of its owner, and Belline is not affiliated with Google. What it says about Belline is read from the same settings that run the product. Read on 10 November 2026. If something here is out of date, write to hello@belline.ai and we will correct it.