How should a barbershop time loyalty messages around Ramadan evening hours?

Set your working hours first, then schedule around them

During Ramadan, most Saudi barbershops shift from a daytime schedule to opening later and closing well past midnight, which means a campaign timed for a normal Tuesday afternoon will land at the wrong moment — mid-afternoon, when the shop and most customers are quiet before iftar. The fix isn't a different message; it's updating the shop's working hours in Waya before scheduling anything.

Once working hours reflect the actual Ramadan schedule, Waya's scheduled campaigns automatically respect them — a send queued outside opening hours moves to the next open slot rather than firing into a closed or quiet shop.

A campaign timing example

Say a barbershop normally opens 10 AM to 10 PM, but during Ramadan shifts to 8 PM to 2 AM. A campaign scheduled for 4 PM — a reasonable time in the normal schedule — would queue and then auto-move to the next open slot at 8 PM once the Ramadan hours are set. Without updating the hours first, that same 4 PM send would go out during the old schedule's window, landing in the middle of a quiet, closed-shop afternoon.

Set the new hours a few days before Ramadan starts, not on the first night, so the very first scheduled campaign of the month already lands correctly.

A specific message for the season

"Ramadan hours: open till 2 AM. Your usual chair is ready after iftar." This works well as a scheduled campaign sent once, near the start of Ramadan, to reset customer expectations about the new hours rather than assuming everyone already knows. Keep it under 90 characters, and write the Arabic version fresh: "دوامنا في رمضان حتى الساعة 2 فجراً، كرسيك جاهز بعد الإفطار."

A second, shorter message later in the month can serve as a reminder during the last ten days, when demand often spikes ahead of Eid: "Last week of Ramadan — book before the Eid rush."

• Opening-week message: reset expectations about the new hours, sent once
• Mid-Ramadan: usually no message needed if hours are already known
• Last-ten-days reminder: shorter, tied to the pre-Eid rush
• Post-Eid: switch working hours back and resume normal-schedule messaging

Quiet hours and prayer-time scheduling

Waya's working-hours logic moves a queued send to the next open slot, but it doesn't automatically pause around individual prayer times within an open window — that's a finer-grained gap worth planning around manually during Ramadan, when Maghrib (sunset, iftar) is the single most sensitive moment of the day. Avoid scheduling anything within about 30 minutes of Maghrib specifically, even if the shop is technically open, since almost no one is checking their phone right then.

Outside that narrow Maghrib window, the shop's set working hours handle the rest — Fajr, Dhuhr, and Asr rarely need special handling for a barbershop already closed or quiet during the day in Ramadan.

Steps to get Ramadan timing right

A short checklist run once, a few days before Ramadan starts, avoids most of the timing mistakes that come from applying a normal-schedule campaign habit to a month with completely different hours. It pairs well with the staff scanning routine you'd normally rehearse before any seasonal shift, since Ramadan's later hours also mean a later, more concentrated evening rush for staff to keep up with.

1. Update working hours a few days early

   Set the new Ramadan hours in the dashboard before the first night, not on it.

2. Draft the opening-week message

   Write a short message resetting expectations about the new hours, under 90 characters.

3. Schedule sends for after iftar

   Avoid the pre-iftar afternoon and the 30 minutes around Maghrib specifically.

4. Draft a last-ten-days reminder

   Prepare a second, shorter message for the pre-Eid stretch when bookings spike.

5. Reset hours back after Eid

   Switch working hours back to normal once Ramadan and Eid have passed so future campaigns land correctly.

Why this matters more for barbershops than some other verticals

Barbershops see one of the sharpest Ramadan demand shifts of any Waya vertical — evening and late-night traffic replaces daytime traffic almost entirely, unlike a salon that might see a smaller shift. Getting the working-hours setting right isn't a minor detail here; it's the difference between a campaign that lands when the shop is genuinely busy and one that quietly fires into an empty afternoon.