The Australian Beauty Industry in 2026: Trends Salon Owners Should Watch

The Australian beauty industry is roughly an $8 billion market, with around 60,000 small businesses. After two volatile years, 2026 is settling into clearer patterns. Here are the five trends that matter.

1. Walk-in queues are coming back

Pandemic-era restrictions pushed everyone to appointments-only. The post-restriction era has revealed that a lot of clients miss walk-ins — particularly for short services like beard trims, eyebrow threading, and quick tints.

Salons that successfully handle both flows (online bookings AND a digital walk-in queue) are seeing 15–25% revenue growth over appointments-only competitors. The kiosk-tablet-at-the-door pattern, popularised by barber shops, is spreading to nail bars, brow studios, and even some hair salons.

2. The "no-commission" pricing pushback

The marketplace model (Fresha, Booksy) is losing market share among established salons in Australia. The math is tough to defend: a $30,000/month salon paying $3,000–$5,000/month in marketplace commission, when a $40/month subscription would do the same job, is leaving $30,000–$60,000 on the table per year.

Newer salons still benefit from marketplace traffic, but mature salons are increasingly switching to fixed-fee software (Trimsy, Timely, Ovatu) once their client base is solid.

3. SMS over email for client communication

Email open rates for service businesses dropped to ~22% in 2025. SMS open rates are 98%. The math made the choice for everyone.

Booking confirmations, reminders, win-back campaigns, birthday rewards — all increasingly SMS-led. Email is becoming the secondary channel, used for receipts and longer-form newsletters only.

The risk: SMS spam fatigue. Clients are starting to push back on too-frequent salon SMS. The platforms that win are the ones that respect frequency caps (most cap at 2 marketing SMS per client per month).

4. Square Terminal eats Tyro

Tyro was the dominant card processor for AU salons through the late 2010s. Square's hardware push (their compact countertop terminal launched 2022 in AU) and their lower processing fees have shifted the balance. By end-2025, Square is in roughly 35% of new salon installs vs Tyro's 25%.

The lock-in factor: Square's booking software (Square Appointments) is free if you process cards through them. That's a meaningful pricing advantage for new salons that don't yet need a more advanced platform.

5. Same-day booking expectations

Customers under 35 increasingly expect to book within 4 hours of intent. The "I'll call tomorrow morning" pattern that worked in 2015 is dead. If your booking page isn't live, you're losing same-day bookings to the salon down the road that has theirs.

This is the single highest-impact change a non-tech-forward salon can make: a working online booking page with at-least-one same-day slot reserved each day. Salons that do this see same-day bookings increase 20–40%.

What's plateauing

• Loyalty programs: still important, but the marginal lift from "having a loyalty program" has shrunk now that everyone has one. Differentiation has shifted to the rewards (services people want vs commodity discounts).
• Instagram-driven booking: still a major traffic source, but conversion has dropped as platforms get more competitive. Don't kill it, but don't bet the business on it either.

What's accelerating

• Voice-search bookings ("Hey Siri, book me a haircut at Snippets"): early days, ~5% of mobile bookings now, projected 15% by end-2026.
• Subscription pricing for unlimited blowdries / weekly nail care: small but growing in metro markets.
• In-person vs at-home pricing tiers: mobile services at a 30%+ premium are becoming a normalised product category, not a niche.

What this means for software choices

The platforms that will win in 2026 are the ones that:

• Handle walk-ins AND appointments equally well
• Charge predictable monthly fees with no commission
• SMS-first communication
• Native AU billing and GST
• Sub-30-minute setup

That's the playbook. The rest is execution.