Vacation and Pay in Hospitality

What must be paid during vacation, and what does not come automatically

In Germany, vacation in hospitality is not unpaid leave by default. Approved vacation must generally be paid as vacation pay. The statutory minimum is 24 working days with a six-day week, which corresponds to 20 working days with a five-day week; what matters is the regular number of working days per week, not simply the number of hours. That is set out in the German Federal Vacation Act, as of 30 September 2026, in Section 3 BUrlG. For employees, that means one practical thing above all: if I approve vacation, I cannot treat that period financially as if the person had just not been scheduled.

That clear starting point matters especially in a restaurant because shifts are rarely as regular as in an office. One server may work Wednesday to Sunday, another colleague four fixed days, and a weekend café worker mostly on Saturdays and Sundays. As an operator, I cannot handle vacation by mood, habit or one random monthly rota. I first have to look at the regular working days properly. Otherwise people quickly get the false impression that only a classic full-time Monday-to-Friday schedule counts as paid vacation. In hospitality, that mistake hits part-time and irregular-shift staff first.

How I separate vacation pay from a vacation bonus

For pay, I keep two terms strictly apart because teams often mix them up. Vacation pay is the legally owed continued pay during approved vacation. A vacation bonus, by contrast, is an additional benefit that only exists if it comes from an employment contract, a collective agreement or an internal company rule. That distinction matters because it prevents false expectations. If a server asks why there is no separate extra line called “vacation bonus” on the payslip even though the vacation days were paid, the confusion is often exactly that: paid vacation and extra vacation money are not the same thing.

For vacation pay itself, Germany uses a clear basic rule as of 30 September 2026: it is generally based on the average earnings from the 13 weeks before the start of the vacation, while additional overtime pay is not included. That comes from Section 11 BUrlG. In my own business, I explain it with a simple restaurant example: if someone had a certain average level of earnings during those 13 weeks, vacation does not suddenly mean zero pay. But it also does not automatically mean that every unusual hour paid separately as overtime continues unchanged during vacation. I review any specific premium types separately.

A typical hospitality case: changing days, same fairness

In hospitality, the confusion is often greater than in an office because many people do not work the same Monday-to-Friday pattern every week. One example: a colleague regularly works five days per week, but sometimes with two long evening shifts and other times with three shorter lunch shifts. For the statutory minimum vacation, the five-day week is still the starting point, not whether one particular day happened to be eight hours or only five. If I only looked at the hours from one random month, I would distort the vacation entitlement and disadvantage employees whose schedules change even though their regular work pattern is clear.

Another common example is a mini-job or part-time café role at weekends. If someone regularly works three days a week, the vacation entitlement is not counted like that of a five-day employee but adjusted to the regular number of working days. In practice, that means I first need to define the real deployment pattern properly instead of handing out vacation days on a rough guess. The most common mistake is discussing vacation in calendar days even though the relevant unit is regular working days. A short written agreement on the weekly pattern prevents surprising amounts of friction later, especially when schedules get busy around events or holidays.

How I organize vacation requests without relying on gut feeling

Vacation only feels fair when the loudest person does not automatically get the best weeks. I therefore use a clear sequence: request, staffing check, decision, documentation and response. In holiday periods I do not just look at kitchen or service in isolation, but at the whole evening. Who opens, who closes, who can guide a new team member, who can handle terrace service and checkout confidently? One week of vacation is operationally very different if the same weekend also includes a city festival, school enrollment season or the December holiday trade. Good vacation planning is not paperwork to me; it is shift planning that respects both free time and the business.

Bonzumo helps me here not by performing an automatic legal assessment, but by making the organization visible. In shift planning, I can view scheduled assignments and absences together, prepare drafts and use the published rota as the binding basis for work. If vacation has been approved, it should not remain buried in a chat message; it belongs in the plan so shift leaders and the office work from the same information. Roles and permissions matter here as well: not everyone should edit absences, but every relevant supervisor should see how an approved week changes the staffing picture. That is how a promise becomes a genuinely protected period in the rota.

Where pay errors in restaurants really come from

Most conflicts do not start with bad intentions. They start with messy groundwork. If start and end times are missing, breaks have to be reconstructed later, or a shift swap was only agreed verbally, it becomes hard to understand what level of earnings in the weeks before vacation was actually realistic. The discussion may sound like a dispute about vacation bonus or vacation pay, but in truth it is often a documentation problem. It becomes especially sensitive when a manager tries to “simplify” matters with a flat estimate. That quickly feels unfair once two employees in similar roles are judged on differently maintained time records. Trust often breaks there faster than over the actual week off.

That is why I do not just organize the days away from work; I also keep the weeks before them clean. With Bonzumo, the team can record working time through the time clock, document exceptions and review working time accounts in an orderly way. That does not replace payroll, but it gives me a solid internal basis for questions: was the final clock-out forgotten, was there a genuine extra shift, or was a break simply recorded incorrectly? If I clarify those cases early, I do not have to debate vacation pay in a fog. For handovers into office work, Restaurant connections with clear setup requirements. and Understand the day's activity before you close up are useful complements because clean handovers always start with clean data capture.

Which criteria I weigh when several people want the same days off

If several employees want the same dates, I need criteria I can explain to the team. I look first at minimum staffing per shift, second at key roles, third at absences already approved, and fourth at how realistically cover can be arranged. A chef de rang who is also training new casual staff has to be assessed differently during a fully booked event week than on a quiet Tuesday in November. The crucial point is that my reasoning may relate to the concrete operation of the business, but not to personal sympathy. If I rely on understandable criteria, I can also explain a rejection respectfully instead of sounding arbitrary.

In everyday practice, it helps to make vacation visible before the final monthly rota is completed. I collect requests early, mark critical periods and address conflicts while alternatives still exist. For example, two bar staff may both want the same weekend off. Before I approve anything, I check whether a third person can safely run the cocktail station or whether we would only be able to offer a stripped-back bar service. Sometimes the right solution is a different vacation date, and sometimes it is a swap supported by someone who has already been trained in. The classic pitfall is discovering after approval that enough people are present on paper, but the decisive skill is missing.

How I explain vacation and pay clearly to the team

On this topic, employees usually do not want a lecture on legislation. They want clear answers to three practical questions: how much vacation do I have, how do I request it, and what will I be paid during that time? That is exactly the order I use in my own business. I keep the regular working days properly documented, explain the difference between paid vacation and any additional vacation bonus, and name who approves requests. That also includes being honest about limits: special cases such as contract clauses or collectively agreed extras should not be guessed from memory at the counter. I check the actual documents so the answer is reliable rather than improvised.

For new colleagues, I do not hide these rules somewhere obscure. I give them a fixed place in employee documents and in onboarding, so people can look up what to do with a vacation request, a shift swap or a forgotten time entry. That reduces questions in the middle of service far more than most operators expect. My aim is not to digitize every human issue, but to make decisions transparent: approved vacation visible in the rota, time records traceable, and the difference between vacation pay and a vacation bonus clearly explained. Then a classic hospitality flashpoint becomes a calm, fair process that guests never notice and employees do not have to fear.