Budgeting practices: a study on Brazilian hotel companies

Abstract

This study aims to explore the budgeting practices in the hotel companies of Brazil’s main tourist centers. The justification is oriented by the number of foreign tourists received by the top ten Brazilian tourist destinations, which reaches 95% of the country. Another motivation is the lack of research on hotel companies in developing countries, and it should also be considered that Brazil will host the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016, which requires a suitable hotel structure to receive a large number of athletes and tourists. Thus, in order to achieve the purpose of this study, surveys were sent to the hotels associated with the Brazilian Association of the Hotel Industry (ABIH), with replies by 40 hotel companies. Descriptive statistics were applied to the results, in order to improve the basis for discussions. The results indicate that most of the hotels adopt corporate budgeting with bottom-up as main budgeting process. Research shows that budgets are developed, more frequently, using the results from previous years and economic indicators. In the performance evaluation, the comparative analysis, the analysis of the causes of deviations and adequacy measures are often applied. The analysis of variance is primarily directed at controlling costs/expenses, identifying potential problems and providing feedback for the next period.