More time off is coming. Your midweek is where it lands. | Sarah Colgate

14 Oct

When I ran Aquaduck I tracked maximum capacity for every day and every tour across the year.

Not revenue. Capacity.

I wanted to know which days were carrying the business. I also wanted to know which days were quietly costing us money. Once you see that on one page, you cannot unsee it.

I have been thinking about that spreadsheet a lot lately. Something is shifting in how Australians spend their week, and it lands directly on the days most operators run half empty.

What is actually happening

In April 2026, OpenAI proposed a four day work week. The reasoning was simple. AI is creating productivity gains, and those gains should be shared with the people doing the work.

That is not a think tank talking. That is one of the companies building the technology.

The evidence underneath it has firmed up fast. Deakin University researchers spent two years interviewing 15 Australian firms running the 100:80:100 model. Full pay, 80% of the hours, same output.

Fourteen of the 15 kept it. None reported a drop in productivity. Six said productivity went up. The companies rated the model 8.5 out of 10.

The international study is bigger again. Boston College sociologists tracked 2,896 workers across 141 companies in six countries, Australia included. It was published in Nature Human Behaviour in July 2025. Burnout fell. Stress fell. Physical and mental health improved. The researchers concluded the benefits outweigh the downsides.

Meanwhile the AI side is moving underneath all of it. The Work AI Index 2026 surveyed 6,000 digital workers across the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. 87% use AI at work. They report saving around 11 hours a week.

Will Stronge at the Autonomy think tank described a shorter week as the most tangible way of making sure AI benefits workers and not only companies. Autonomy forecasts 28% of Britain's workforce on a 32 hour week by 2033.

I am not going to tell you the five day week ends next year. It does not.

But the direction is clear, and I think you should be planning for it.

Where the extra day goes

Australians are already voting with their wallets.

Household retail spending hit $38.63 billion in January 2026. That is up 5% on January 2025, in the middle of a cost of living squeeze.

Look at where the growth sat. Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food led at 8.7%. Clothing and footwear followed at 6.1%. Household goods crawled along at 4.1%.

People are buying less stuff. They are buying more doing.

CommBank's data says the same thing from a different angle. Movie redemptions through Yello tripled in a year. More than 175,000 live entertainment tickets were redeemed across concerts, comedy and theatre. Travel is now the number one savings goal in the CommBank app. Customers redeemed more than $1.9 million in travel credits between July 2024 and October 2025.

Budgets are tight and people still went out.

Now add a spare Friday to that. Or a spare Monday.

Money is not the only thing holding people back from an experience. Time is. A balloon flight, a day tour, a two night break inland. These need a clear day, not a spare hour after work.

New Zealand worked this out early. In 2020 Jacinda Ardern encouraged employers to look at a four day week, saying it certainly would help tourism all around the country. Andrew Barnes moved Perpetual Guardian to four days back in 2018. He called a shorter week a strategy to rebuild the tourism market.

They were right about the mechanism. They were early on the timing. AI is what makes it affordable for employers this time around.

The part most operators will get wrong

I have to be honest with you here.

More midweek demand does not automatically mean more profit for you. It means more demand arriving on the days your business is worst set up to serve.

Arival's 2026 ANZ research found 77% of operators still use static pricing. One price, every day, all year.

So picture Thursday demand lifting 15%. Your Thursday price is the same as your Saturday price. You have not improved your margin. You have just made Thursday busier at the same rate.

And your costs on a Thursday are usually worse. Thinner crew, split shifts, a supplier minimum you barely clear.

[Sarah, a real midweek example here? A specific quiet day or season at Aquaduck where the tour ran and still lost money.]

There is a second thing worth saying. Those saved hours may never turn into time off at all. The Work AI Index found only 13% of organisations say AI is meaningfully improving performance. Plenty of employers will simply pocket the hours and ask for more output. That has happened with every labour saving technology since email.

So do not restructure your whole business around a four day week. I suggest you get ready for the smaller, quieter version of it that is already arriving.

What I suggest you do

Pull your bookings for the last 12 months. Split them by day of week.

Not revenue. Passengers or bookings measured against your maximum capacity for that day.

You are looking for the days sitting under 60%.

Then look at what you charge on those days. If it is the same as your peak day, you have found your first move.

Midweek is where a smaller operator can win. The big weekend competition is not fighting for it nearly as hard.

[Sarah, Hot Air Balloon Gold Coast and Cairns example here? Their shoulder or midweek pricing work.]

Thirty minutes this week

Open your booking system. Export 12 months of bookings. Build one column for day of week. Build a second for capacity used.

That is it. Thirty minutes.

You will know inside half an hour whether you have a midweek problem or a midweek opportunity.

Three things to hold onto.

The four day week is now evidenced rather than theoretical, and AI is the reason employers can afford to look at it.
Australians are already choosing experiences over goods. Time constrains them as much as money does.
Static pricing means any extra midweek demand arrives at your worst margin. Fix the pricing before you chase the demand.

For me this comes back to the same lesson I learnt at Aquaduck. Fix the business you have before you try to grow it.

If you want help working out where your quiet days are costing you, call me on 0491 729 043.