Journal
Journal from the season
These are not essays about ambition. They are notes on rain, allotments, till tapes, and the kind of question a director can actually take into a kitchen.
The journal is for people who already keep books and still have to decide. If you want an engagement rather than a column, the list of work is next door.
What to bring to a modeling scoping visit
A scoping visit on Melikishvili Street lasts up to ninety minutes. It is not a presentation. It is the hour in which we find out whether a forecast can be honest. Bring two years of the series if you have them — occupancy by room type, till tapes by week, warehouse counts, loan schedules. Bring last season’s plan even if you are ashamed of it. Bring one person who was there when a number was written down, not only the person who now owns the file.
Why three scenarios beat one brave number
Operators ask for one number because a bank, a partner, or a family table asked for one number. A single occupancy figure for August feels like leadership. It is often just a refusal to print the week that does not fit the story.
Reading a variance table without a statistician
The variance table in our packs has four columns a director can actually use: what was planned, what happened, the difference in the unit you already speak (rooms, bags, lari), and a short cause that is allowed to be weather, a cancelled bus, or “we do not know yet.”
How Batumi retailers misread tourist-season inventory
A shop on a tourist street sees people. It does not automatically see which SKUs leave, on which days, and how long a carton sits in the back once the buses thin out. We have opened stock books in Batumi where October was still being ordered like late July because the pavement “felt” full. The till tapes, once laid out by week, showed a different trade: fewer baskets, different sizes, more locals buying the cheap line and ignoring the souvenir shelf that had been reordered “for the season.”
When a hotel occupancy forecast should ignore last August
Last August is the month directors remember. It is also the month that ruins a forecast if you let it sit in the average like a quiet neighbour. On the Batumi boulevard a hot, dry August fills rooms that a wet Tuesday in July will not. If you fold that August into a single “summer factor,” the model will ask the kitchen to staff as if rain were a rumour. We have sat in rooms where last year’s record Saturday was still being used to justify an allotment that the night audit had already contradicted.