Who books the iftar tent

The tents are going up in the hotel car parks about now, with the month expected to begin within the week, depending on the sighting, and the campaigns for them are already running. Lanterns. A long table. Three generations sitting down together, a grandmother pouring, a child reaching across for the dates.

The person who actually fills that tent is not in the picture.

She is an office manager, or an executive assistant, or whoever in the company has been handed the staff iftar this year. She has a head count, a budget per head, a date that has to fall on a weeknight because the guests are colleagues, and a spreadsheet of dietary requirements. What she needs to know is whether the room can be closed off, whether there is a screen for two slides, whether forty cars can park, whether the invoice can be raised before the month ends, and whether the price on the rate sheet includes service.

None of that is in the advertisement, because the advertisement was written for a family.

In the Gulf cities I work across, a Ramadan tent is paid for by companies and decorated for families. The weekend nights fill with people who walk in and pay at the door. The weeknights are sold, weeks ahead, over the phone by the banqueting office, to buyers who never see the campaign at all, and whose decision gets made in a message thread with a colleague and a signature from finance.

The marketing money goes into the picture. The revenue comes off a rate sheet attached to an email.

Both audiences are real. Only one of them signs.

The hotel's Ramadan customer is a company. The family in the advertisement is the company's guest.