🚨 Budget season is back. In Revenue Management, we all secretly ask the same thing: Do we really need to go through this show one more time?
The deeper tension is not the spreadsheet and numbers though. It’s the two sides of the table.
On one side, the team building and executing the budget. They work bottom-up: market performance, internal benchmarks, inventory optimization, and spotting opportunities.
On the other side, investors and owners. They look at the return models, risks and value.
This is where budget season turns into a “fight”. The operating team presents a case for +2%. Ownership pushes back: “I hear you, but we need +7%. Come back when you can make that work.”
The result is negotiation, not collaboration. Owners care about asset returns, operators care about operational performance.
The budget is where those two views have to meet.
What breaks the loop is zooming out before zooming in:
1. Where are we today in the 10-year plan?
2. Do the market, financial assumptions still hold, What has shifted?
3. What does the new trajectory look like?
4. Build the budget from that picture and tell the story from there.
