21 June 2026 · Tamar Gelashvili
Ask the dining book three questions before the budget
Breakfast attach, courtyard covers, and banquet pickup belong in the budget meeting. If they arrive as stories, the rooms pages will steal the hour.
Rooms arrive at the budget meeting with occupancy, ADR, and a forecast that at least pretends to be a table. Dining often arrives as a feeling: the courtyard was “good,” banquets were “uneven,” breakfast was “a lot of work.” Feelings do not survive a rate argument. Three figures do.
First, breakfast attach. How many occupied rooms took breakfast, and on which weekdays? Included breakfast on an OTA package will inflate covers and starve contribution. If you cannot split included from paid, say that out loud before anyone praises the morning service.
Second, courtyard or à la carte covers by day, not by month. A Saturday lunch that fills the garden can hide a Tuesday dinner that costs more in hours than it returns. The chef already knows which service is heavy. The budget needs the count.
Third, banquet and event pickup. In Tbilisi houses this is often still a notebook: a wedding in June, a corporate supra in October, a cancellation that never reached the till file. If the notebook cannot become a column, the budget will treat banquet as weather.
I ask for these three before I let the rooms pages take the hour. A hotel can look healthy on room nights and still cook itself into a poor year. The Property Revenue Briefing puts dining on the same weekday spine as occupancy so the chef and the GM are not reporting from different calendars.
If your budget meeting is already on the diary, send the till extract with the room file. We would rather delay a week than draw a kitchen from memory.