Something quiet has been happening in Australian hospitality over the last year or so. People are still going out. Still getting coffee, still booking dinners, still organising catch-ups at their favourite local bar. But when they get there, they're being a little more careful about how they spend, understandably.

They're choosing the pasta instead of the steak, having one drink instead of two, skipping dessert, or sharing a main instead of ordering their own. They're still coming, but the average spend per visit has softened.

For a venue running on already tight margins, that matters. If every table is worth 15 or 20 percent less than it was 18 months ago, you feel it. The upsell that used to carry your revenue isn't quite as reliable as it once was.

So what do you do about it?

The honest answer is that you need more people through the door. Not instead of creating a great experience that encourages people to spend but alongside it. Volume becomes more important when the average transaction value shrinks.

And that changes what your marketing needs to do.

It's not enough to just be visible

For a long time, the job of hospitality marketing was mostly about awareness. Get your name out there, build your following, post consistently, and trust that people would come when they were ready.

That still matters. But it's not enough on its own anymore.

What you need now is marketing that creates specific reasons to visit at specific moments: a new dish launching, a mid-week special, a reason tied to a particular window of time that gives someone a nudge to make a booking instead of staying home.

Your existing customers are your easiest win

The people who've already been in are the most likely to come back. They know your space, they trust your food, they've had a good experience. Reaching them again costs far less than trying to find brand new customers.

A simple email to your database can bring people back in during a week they might otherwise not have thought of you. A message like we've just launched our winter menu and we'd love to see you to someone who came in six months ago can be quite effective. It's personal, timely, and it doesn't feel like advertising.

If you haven't started building an email list yet, this is the most important marketing thing you're not doing.

Be easy to find when people are actually looking

There's a difference between someone scrolling their feed and someone actively searching for somewhere to eat tonight. The second person is already motivated. They're going somewhere; the question is whether it's you or the café two streets away.

That's why your Google presence matters so much.

When someone types dinner near me, you need to show up prominently, with good reviews, accurate hours, and appealing photos. That alone can turn an undecided searcher into a booking.

Address your slow days deliberately

One of the highest-return things any venue can do is focus specifically on their quiet periods. Not the Saturday nights that fill themselves but the Tuesday lunches or the quiet weeks between school holidays.

Those are the periods where fixed costs (rent, wages, utilities) run with little or nothing coming in against them. A targeted offer that fills ten more covers on a quiet Wednesday has a much more notable return compared to marketing that just adds people to an already full Saturday service.

This doesn't have to be complicated. A simple offer, promoted through email and a targeted social post, with an easy way to book. Done consistently, it can meaningfully shift the economics of your quiet weeks.