Comparative analysis of budgeting in the Slovene hotel industry

The main purpose of the presented research was to investigate whether Slovene hotels that have a business strategy and strategic management accounting are more successful in comparison with those that still do not have a long-term business strategy and strategic management accounting.Hotels that have a business strategy and strategic management accounting are expected to be more successful in comparison with those that still do not have a long-term business strategy. Questionnaires were distributed to the management of selected Slovene hotels. The Slovene budgeting practices were assessed in Slovene large hotels, which have more than 100 rooms. The analysis was performed at the beginning of the years 2004 and 2008, respectively. Budgeting practices in Slovene hotels were assessed by analyzing the extent to which managers used strategic management accounting and the extent to which business strategies were implemented. The analysis provides evidence that hotels with a long-term business strategy are more successful than those that that have a short-term strategy, or are even without one. Although an improvement in the field of continuous budgeting in the five-year period can be ascertained, only a minority of Slovene hotels uses standard cost as a basis for budgeting. This was the first study that ascertained discrepancies between Slovenian budgeting practice and foreign best practices, which is undoubtedly of great interest for decision-makers on the level of individual hotel.