Operations budgeting practices of lodging firms in the United States are compared with those of lodging firms in Scandinavia. Practices compared include approaches to preparing the budgets at both the corporate and hotel levels. A majority of hotel chains in both the U.S. and Scandinavia use a bottom-up approach to budgeting. Reasons are reported for varying preparation approaches. Budget revision approaches are reported, the point at which the revision starts, and what management level is responsible. Finally, budgetary control is studied including the different levels of variance toleration for various expenses. Lodging firms in the United States have lower tolerance levels over food and beverage costs than their Scandinavian counterparts while the reverse appears to be the case for other costs.