Hotel and resort groups
Every hotel earns its own money. Most of it lands somewhere else.
One hotel or a portfolio of them, each often its own company, in more than one country and on more than one bank calendar. The revenue reaches them through card acquirers, online travel agencies and tour operators — net of commission, days after the guest paid, and credited to whichever company signed the contract. Tresora reads all of it and puts each euro back where it was earned.
What the guests paid
EUR 412,600.00
ACQ SETTLE 20260814 · Aug 14
- HES-04Beachfront resort, Spain
- EUR 148,920.00
- HES-11City hotel, Spain
- EUR 121,340.00
- HPT-02Beachfront resort, Portugal
- EUR 84,760.00
- HIT-07City hotel, Italy
- EUR 57,580.00
- Taken off before it landed
- EUR -15,130.00
- Credited to HGR-01
- EUR 397,470.00
SoldAug 11 – Aug 12
3 days from the first sale to the credit
How a hotel group is built
Why doesn’t a property’s account show what the property sold?
Because four things stand between the guest’s card and the property company’s bank account, and each of them is somebody else’s decision.
- The property is a company
- A hotel group is usually a group of companies as well — often one per property, and in several countries. Each one has its own books, its own bank accounts and its own local auditor, so a credit that lands in the wrong one is not an inconvenience — it is two sets of books saying something that is not true.
- Revenue arrives net, and late
- Card acquirers, online travel agencies and tour operators pay in batches, after their own cut-off, net of a commission deducted before the money moves. The figure that reaches the bank appears nowhere in the folios it came from.
- The year is not flat
- A coastal property earns most of its year in a hundred days and pays its people, its energy and its refurbishment across all twelve months. That calendar belongs to the season, not to the group.
- The operator is not always the owner
- Management contracts, leases and owned hotels sit side by side in one group, so the company that runs a hotel and the company that owns it are often two different balance sheets — with a fee, a rent or a profit share moving between them every month.
None of that is a treasury problem the day it is set up. It becomes one on the morning somebody asks what a single hotel actually made, and the only honest answer is a figure that has been through three systems and sits in a fourth company.
One credit, four companies
Which company does the money belong to?
The acquirer settles to the account named in the contract. The room nights behind that credit were sold by four different property companies, and until each euro is put back with the company that earned it, four sets of books are wrong and nobody can say by how much.
- Split at the source
- The provider’s own settlement report carries the outlet each sale was made at. Tresora reads it, matches the batch to the credit the bank posted, and attributes every folio inside it to the property company that sold it.
- Booked as what it is
- Cash sitting in one company and revenue belonging to another is an intercompany position, and it is treated as one — both legs, on both sides, ready to be netted before anything moves externally.
- Kept per country
- Each country’s bank holidays, cut-offs and value dates are held against that country’s companies, so a batch that settles on a working day in one place and a holiday in another does not become two versions of the same week.
Inside the settlement above
- Property companies
- 4
- Sold the room nights inside one credit
- Guest card payments
- 1,842
- Arrived as a single line on the statement
- Taken off on the way
- EUR 15,130.00
- Commission and returns, deducted before the credit
One credit, 4 intercompany positions — each one a company that earned money and did not receive it. Both legs of every one of them are matched and netted before anything is paid between the companies.
A year that will not sit still
How do you plan cash when half the year takes it out?
By treating the season as data rather than as background. Twelve months of the group’s own movement, each on its own line, and a forecast that starts from the balance the banks and the ledger already agree on.
The twelve months together
EUR +26,340,000
Net cash movement across the property companies
Net movement by month
- 6 months put cash in
- EUR +83,220,000
- 6 months took cash out
- EUR -56,880,000
Best month against worstEUR 45,240,000
The year nets to a figure a board can live with. No single month does. 6 months of the twelve take cash out of the group, and the gap between the best month and the worst is what decides how much of a facility a hotel group has to keep undrawn.
A forecast built on that shape carries each property’s own calendar: when it opens, when it closes, when the season it sits in turns. The horizon is anchored to reconciled balances, so a February projection is measured against what actually landed rather than against last year’s.
The same twelve months cut by property, by country or by the whole group, from one reconciled set of movements. Nobody re-keys a spreadsheet to get the other view.
What changes on Monday
What does a hotel group actually do differently?
Four things, and none of them asks anybody to change how they sell a room.
- A hotel’s cash is a figure, not a project
- Ask what one property made and holds, or any level above it, and the answer comes from the same reconciled movements the group position is built from.
- Settlements arrive already attributed
- Card, agency and tour-operator batches are matched to the credits the banks posted and split back to the companies that earned them, with the provider’s report kept as the evidence.
- What the group owes itself is visible
- Every position created by a credit landing in the wrong company is opened, matched on both legs and netted, so nobody funds a payment the group is making to itself.
- The low season is a number before it arrives
- The forecast carries each property’s calendar and each country’s cut-offs, so the February low point is on a screen in August rather than in an email in January.
Where to read further
- Reconciliation Bank against ledger, with the evidence for every match.
- Intercompany Both legs of every internal movement, netted and explained.
- Cash position Group, country, entity — the same figure at any level.
- Forecasting What the position becomes, from commitments you can point at.
- Retail and franchise High-volume takings reconciled to the day, store by store.
The questions we get
What a hotel group asks before it moves
- 01Can Tresora reconcile card and travel-agency settlements to individual hotels?
- Yes. The provider’s settlement report names the outlet behind each sale, so the batch is matched to the credit the bank posted and then split back to the property company that sold the room. What the provider deducted is reconstructed line by line rather than forced, and the evidence stays attached to the match.
- 02Every hotel is its own company. Does that mean a separate setup for each one?
- No. Companies, their banks and their calendars are configuration, not installation. A property company is added with its accounts, its country’s holidays and its cut-offs, and it appears in the group position at the level everything else is read at.
- 03How is a management company that operates hotels it does not own treated?
- As two counterparties with a relationship. The operating company and the owning company each keep their own books, and the fee, rent or profit share moving between them is matched on both sides. Where both sit inside the group it is an intercompany position and gets netted; where the owner is a third party it is a receivable or a payable with a name on it.
- 04Can we see the position for one country, one brand or one hotel?
- Yes, from the same figures. The group position, a country, a brand or a single property are cuts of one reconciled set of balances, not four reports that then have to agree with each other.
- 05Our seasonality makes forecasting useless. What is different here?
- The starting point. A forecast opens at the balance the banks and the ledger already agree on, carries every dated commitment at its own date, and says which part of the curve is a record and which part is read off months already reconciled. The season is still the season; what changes is that the low point is measured rather than remembered.
Bring one hotel and one month.
A month of statements for one property, the settlement reports behind them and the ledger extract that should agree with both. We will run it on your own figures and show you what each hotel actually earned and holds.
The settlements that do not reconcile come back with the provider’s report beside the bank line. Nothing is posted to your books that you have not approved.