Thanksgiving may be the most human holiday about waiting. People wait at the airport, in the kitchen, on the couch, for everyone to arrive, for the table to be cleared, and for the pie to be cut.
The wait is not the enemy of the holiday. It is part of how the day unfolds.
For businesses, though, Thanksgiving week brings a different kind of waiting: the line at the café, the delayed appointment, the airport gate, the auto service lounge, the restaurant table. Customers and patients may be carrying a full holiday schedule with them. A wait that would barely register in June can feel heavier when someone is watching the clock or trying to reach family.
That makes the holiday rush more than an operations challenge. It is a customer-experience moment.
Thanksgiving week brings real-world surges
The latest completed Thanksgiving-period data gives businesses useful context as they plan for 2026. The National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics reported that 202.9 million consumers shopped in-store or online during the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in 2025, a record at the time. Black Friday alone drew 80.3 million in-store shoppers and 85.7 million online shoppers, according to the NRF’s December 2025 survey release.
Travel adds another layer. The Transportation Security Administration recorded 18,104,378 passenger screenings from Tuesday, November 25 through Monday, December 1, 2025, according to its checkpoint travel numbers. Thanksgiving Day itself was quieter than several surrounding travel days, underscoring that holiday activity is spread across the week rather than concentrated on one date.
These are last season’s figures, not a forecast or a count for Thanksgiving 2026. They do, however, illustrate why holiday planning reaches beyond retailers and airports. Restaurants, cafés, medical and dental offices, auto service centers, laundromats, hotels, and other local businesses can all see shifts in customer volume, timing, and expectations.
The same wait can feel different in November
A wait has a clock-time duration and an emotional experience. They are not always the same.
In The Psychology of Waiting Lines (1985), service-management writer David Maister describes several principles that help explain why a wait can feel longer: occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time; uncertainty makes a wait harder to tolerate; and unexplained waits can feel longer than explained ones. These are service-management principles, not a claim that every person experiences every wait in the same way.
The holiday context can make those principles especially relevant. Someone waiting for a table may be coordinating with relatives. A traveler may be watching a connection time. A patient may be worried about a family member or trying to fit an appointment between holiday plans. Their wait is happening alongside other expectations, not in a vacuum.
That does not mean every delay can be prevented. It does mean businesses can pay attention to what customers experience while they wait: whether anyone acknowledges them, whether the time feels empty, and whether they know what is happening next.
Make the wait feel acknowledged, not ignored
The first step is simple: tell people you see them. A greeting, check-in, or clear update can signal that a customer is in the process, rather than forgotten in a line or waiting room.
Next, set an expectation you can stand behind. A realistic range is more useful than “soon.” If the estimate changes, update people and explain what you can. Maister’s 1985 article describes how uncertainty and unexplained delays can make the wait more difficult to bear. Even when the business cannot speed up the service, clear communication can reduce some of the uncertainty.
Then, consider whether there is something worthwhile to do while people wait. In a restaurant, it could be a menu or information about holiday hours and catering. At an auto service center, it might be a clear explanation of the service process or how to schedule follow-up work. In a café, clinic, or salon, it could be useful business information alongside an engaging distraction.
This is the hospitality principle behind offering warm bread or chips and salsa before the meal. The gesture does not make the wait disappear; it helps the guest feel considered during it.
Give attention somewhere useful to go
A wait can be more than a blank space between arrival and service. CXperks is designed as an engagement layer for physical locations, using a simple ENTERTAIN → ENGAGE → INSIGHT approach.
A customer can scan a QR code and access digital magazines, games, and trivia on their own phone, with no app, download, or login required. CXperks says it collects no personal data. The same experience can make a business’s own next steps easier to find, such as holiday hours and catering information at a restaurant, or service scheduling at an auto shop.
The idea is not to distract from a problem that needs attention. A digital experience cannot shorten a queue, replace a staff update, or resolve a service delay. It can give customers an optional way to use the time while they wait, and give operators an opportunity to make useful information easier to reach.
The INSIGHT stage can help a business see which content or actions attract attention through anonymous engagement signals such as scans, dwell time, and content usage. Those signals can inform future decisions, but they are not proof of revenue lift. CXperks does not guarantee that every customer will engage.
Keep review invitations fair and optional
A holiday visit can also be a natural time to think about how a business listens to customer feedback. If a business offers a Google review link, the request should be neutral, optional, and available to every customer, not limited to people expected to leave a positive review.
Google’s User-Generated Content Policy prohibits incentivized reviews, discouraging negative reviews, selectively soliciting positive reviews, pressuring customers to review while on the premises, and requesting specific review content. Google’s guidance on getting more reviews also says customers must be signed in to a Google Account to leave one.
CXperks can make a review link easier to find in an appropriate follow-up experience, but it does not write reviews or guarantee engagement. Businesses should not offer incentives, discounts, gifts, or anything of value for reviews; gate requests based on customer sentiment; route unhappy customers away from Google; promise positive reviews; request a particular star rating or wording; pressure customers to review on the premises; or have staff write reviews. Keep the invitation unfiltered and let customers decide whether to participate.
A practical plan for Thanksgiving week
A few steps can make a holiday wait feel more considered:
- Plan around the surge. Review last year’s busy periods and prepare staffing, seating, appointment buffers, and customer-facing materials accordingly.
- Set expectations early. Post accurate wait information where customers can see it, and update people when conditions change.
- Give the wait something worthwhile. Offer relevant entertainment, clear service information, or useful next steps without making participation compulsory.
- Capture what happened. Look at wait times alongside engagement signals such as scans, dwell, and content usage. Use what you learn to adjust next year’s plan; don’t treat engagement alone as proof of business impact.
For businesses with waiting customers, the holiday rush is a chance to put this approach into practice. The CXperks solutions overview explains how ENTERTAIN, ENGAGE, and INSIGHT can work together in physical locations.
The holiday wait can shape what customers remember
The holidays concentrate what the rest of the year spreads out: more plans, tighter schedules, and more moments spent waiting. Businesses cannot control every delay, but they can acknowledge the wait, explain what is happening, and make the time feel less empty.
A thoughtful waiting experience will not fix every operational challenge. It can, however, help a customer feel that their time matters. Goodwill that may last beyond the holiday week and into January.
Planning for a holiday rush at your location? Book a conversation with Scott T. Janney.