Are You Playing Santa This Year? How to Take Bookings for Santa Visits

Every December, thousands of people put on the red suit and the white beard and visit families, kindergartens and office parties. For some it's a yearly side job, for others a small seasonal business with several Santas and elves. Either way, the hardest part usually isn't the "Ho ho ho". It's the phone calls, the messages and the spreadsheet of addresses for Christmas Eve, when every family wants Santa at exactly six o'clock. This guide is for everyone playing Santa in 2026: how to plan your season, price your visits, build a realistic Christmas Eve schedule and let families book online instead of calling you.

Decide what you offer

Start by writing down the kinds of visits you'll take. Most Santas offer a short list like this:

• Home visit. Usually 15–30 minutes: Santa arrives, talks to the children, listens to a poem or a song and hands out the gifts the parents have prepared.
• Christmas Eve home visit. The same visit on the busiest evening of the year. Many Santas charge more for it, because demand is far higher than the hours available.
• Kindergarten, school or club party. Longer, often 45–60 minutes, with games and a gift for every child.
• Office party or corporate event. Usually in the evening, sometimes with an elf or Mrs Claus as a pair.
• Photo session. If you work with a studio or a shopping centre, families book a short slot for photos with Santa.

Each of these works best as a separate service with its own length and price. A family looking for a 20-minute home visit shouldn't have to read about corporate packages, and you don't want a two-hour party booked into a 20-minute gap.

How to price your visits

Prices vary a lot between countries and cities, so look at what other Santas near you charge before you set yours. A few rules make the decision easier:

• Charge more for peak times. The evening of 24 December and the last weekends before Christmas sell out first. A separate, higher-priced Christmas Eve service is fair and common.
• Include travel in the price. Set a clear area you cover and add a fixed surcharge for addresses outside it, rather than calculating every trip separately.
• Price groups differently. A kindergarten party with 25 children is more work than a family with two. Price it by length or group size.
• Keep it simple. Three or four round prices are easier for families to understand and for you to explain.

Plan a realistic Christmas Eve route

Christmas Eve is where most Santa seasons succeed or fail. Families want the visit between about 16:00 and 20:00, and each one expects Santa to arrive on time. The mistake to avoid is booking visits back to back without counting the drive in between.

• Book the visit together with the travel time. If a visit lasts 20 minutes and the drive to the next address takes up to 20 minutes, make the Christmas Eve service 40 or 45 minutes long. The calendar then never puts two visits closer together than you can actually drive.
• Use fixed start times. Offering times every 45 minutes (16:00, 16:45, 17:30…) is easier to plan than a free choice of minutes.
• Split your area. If you cover a whole city, consider offering different evenings or time blocks for different districts, so you aren't driving from one end to the other every hour.
• Leave a buffer. Keep one slot free in the middle of the evening for a late start, a lost address or a child who needs a little longer.
• Have a driver if you can. A helper who drives, carries the gift sack and keeps an eye on the schedule makes the evening much calmer, and Santa never has to park in costume.

Collect the details that make the visit magical

A good Santa visit depends on what the parents tell you beforehand. Ask for it when they book, not in a phone call the day before:

• The full address, with the door code, floor and anything that helps you find the right door in the dark.
• The children's names and ages, so Santa greets everyone by name.
• Something Santa should mention: a new skill, a good deed, a little sister who was born this year.
• Where the gifts will be, for example in a bag behind the front door.
• A phone number for the day, plus anything else you should know: a shy child, a dog, a child who is scared of costumes.

When all of this is in the booking, you can read it in the car a minute before you ring the bell.

Several Santas? Give each one their own calendar

If you run a small Santa agency, the same rules apply, just with more people. Give every Santa (and every elf, if they work separately) their own schedule with the hours they can work. Families can either pick a specific Santa or simply take the first free one, and nobody can be booked twice for the same time.

How to take Santa bookings online with timedule

Taking bookings by phone in December means answering calls while you're in costume. With timedule's online booking, families pick a time themselves and you get the booking with all the details. A setup that works well for Santas:

1. Create your services. One service for each type of visit, with its price and length. For Christmas Eve, include the travel time in the length as described above.
2. Add your schedule. Set the hours you're available, such as weekends in December and the afternoon and evening of 24 December. Add every Santa as a staff member with their own working hours.
3. Set the booking rules. Under Booking website → Booking rules, set the Time interval to match your visit length and raise Maximum days in advance so families can book Christmas Eve already in November.
4. Ask the extra questions. Under Booking website → Booking form, add questions for the address, the children's names and ages and the notes for Santa. The answers appear in the booking and in your new-booking email.
5. Take a deposit. Christmas Eve visits can't be resold at the last minute. Connect PayPal or Square under Settings and ask for a deposit or full prepayment. Our guide to appointment deposits explains how much to ask.
6. Turn on reminders. An SMS or email reminder 24 hours before reminds parents to have the gifts ready and to check the address. See how reminders reduce no-shows.
7. Share your link. Put your booking link in your ads, on Facebook and Instagram and in local parents' groups, or add a booking button to your website.

Every booking comes with a cancellation link, so a family whose plans change can free the time themselves, and you can give it to someone on your waiting list.

A checklist for the season

• Open bookings early. Families start looking for Santa in November. The best Christmas Eve times are often gone by early December.
• Check your costume. Clean the suit, wash or replace the beard, and have a spare pair of white gloves.
• Prepare your stories. Know where the reindeer are waiting and how Santa knows the children's names.
• Charge your phone and keep a printed list. If the phone dies at 18:00 on Christmas Eve, the paper list still works.
• Close the calendar when you're full. Block the rest of the evening rather than squeezing in one more visit you can't reach on time.

Conclusion: let the families book, so you can be Santa

Playing Santa is one of the most rewarding seasonal jobs there is, as long as the planning doesn't take over. Decide on a short list of visits, price Christmas Eve properly, count the driving time into every booking and ask families for the details in advance. Then put the booking online, and spend December making children happy instead of answering the phone.

If you'd like to try it, see what timedule can do and create your Santa booking page in a few minutes.