QR menus in hotels: setup, languages, price updates and the printed list rule

A hotel QR menu is a web page a guest opens by scanning a printed code; it is not an ordering system. In Türkiye it does not replace the price list: food and beverage businesses are expected to display lists at the entrance and on the tables, and to hand over a printed list when asked. Confirm the current requirements, dates and penalties for your own case with an accountant or legal adviser.

A guest scans the code on the table, sees last season's price for the same dish, and asks the waiter which one is real. The answer depends on which of your price lists is the true one, and on whether the printed list is still on the table at all. This guide treats the hotel QR menu as a small system: one source of prices, one named owner, several outlets, several languages, and a printed list duty that the code does not lift. After reading, you will be able to set the system up, keep it in step, and pass a morning check in any outlet.

What is a hotel QR menu, and what is it not?#

A hotel QR menu is a web page that a guest opens by pointing a phone camera at a printed code. The code carries a link; the menu itself lives on a server, which is why the page can change while the printed code stays the same.

The code is a link in a square. It stores a web address, not the dish list. Nothing about your prices or recipes sits inside the code, so a code cannot go out of date on its own; the page behind it can.

A menu page shows information. An ordering system takes the order to the kitchen and puts a charge on the guest's bill. They are different products, and the second one drags in the till, the fiscal document and the night audit. If you are evaluating that side, the questions are closer to those in choosing a restaurant and bar POS for a hotel.

What the page can carry: outlet name, opening hours, languages, photographs, allergen and ingredient notes, and a plain line saying what is included in the guest's board basis. What the page does not do by itself: it does not update the till, does not print the paper list, does not issue a fiscal document, and does not prove that the price shown is the price you charge.

The page belongs on the hotel's own website or guest app, fed from the same price data as the till. That shared source is the whole design decision; the design of the page is secondary. A useful decision rule before launch: if nobody in the building can name the person who edits the page, do not print the code yet.

Does a QR code replace a printed price list in Türkiye?#

No. Article 8 of the Price Tag Regulation (opens in a new tab) allows a QR code on the tables as an additional way to show the price list, while the lists at the entrance and on the tables remain a duty, and a printed list must be handed over if the guest asks for one (Mevzuat Bilgi Sistemi, consolidated text, 30 January 2026).

Article 8(1) requires tariff and price lists to be hung, attached or placed where the service is provided, so that consumers can easily see and read them. In restaurants, cafés, patisseries and similar food and beverage businesses they must also go in front of the entrance door, one for each door if there are several, and on the tables where service is given.

Article 8(2) says that on the tables the price list may also be shown by QR code, but the price list must be handed over separately if the consumer asks for it. "Also" is the operative word: the code is a second channel, not a substitute.

Article 8(3) requires every product offered to appear in the tariff and price lists. A dish sold at the pool bar but missing from the page is a gap, and so is a page that lists a dish you stopped serving. Article 8(6) says any charge taken under any name beyond the listed prices must be shown in the list, and that these businesses may not ask consumers for a service, table or cover charge or a similar extra payment.

We do not print fine amounts here: they are re-valued, and the current figure belongs in a conversation with your accountant or legal adviser, together with the current consolidated text. The practical consequence is simple: the entrance list and the table list are the backbone, and the QR page is the layer you can change quickly. Plan the paper first.

One source of prices: how do you keep the till, the page and the paper in step?#

You keep them in step by having exactly one price table that everything else is generated from, and one named person who is allowed to change it. Three surfaces edited by three people will always drift.

Name the price owner and a deputy. In a small hotel this is usually the food and beverage manager; in a larger one it may be a cost controller. The point is that a price change has one door. Keep a single price table, item by item, with the outlet, the portion, the currency and the date the price takes effect. The till is loaded from it, the web page is generated from it, and the paper list is printed from it.

Write the change procedure down: who may request a change, who approves it, when it takes effect, and what gets reprinted or reloaded. A price change is a small project with three outputs, not one. Run a weekly spot check: pick three items, compare the till, the QR page and the printed list, and write the result in a log. Three items take five minutes and catch most drift.

Treat a price change as a reprint trigger. The moment a price changes, the table list and the entrance list are out of date, and the QR page is the surface you can correct instantly, while the paper lists must be reprinted. Plan for variants before you need them: breakfast, à la carte, set menu, seasonal menu, and the board-basis wording for all-inclusive guests. Variants multiply the surfaces, which is why the single price table matters more, not less.

If a price must change during service, change it after the outlet closes and note the time in the log, so that a bill printed at 21:00 can be explained against the list in force at 21:00.

Which languages should the menu be in, and who checks them?#

Choose languages from your actual guest mix and from who can proofread them, not from ambition. Two or three languages that a human has read beat eight that a machine produced.

Start from the guest mix you already see in the outlet and at the front desk, not from a list of the world's languages. If a language cannot be proofread by a member of staff or a trusted regular, it is a risk, not a feature. The same logic applies to the wider site, as covered in translating a hotel website with AI and who checks it.

Dish names need a glossary, not a translation. A local dish translated word for word reads as a different dish; keep the original name and add one short line of explanation in the target language. Allergen and ingredient wording must never be machine translated on its own. A mistranslated allergen is a safety problem, and the safe pattern is a fixed, approved list of terms per language.

Name the sign-off: the food and beverage manager owns the content, and a speaker of each language signs the text. Record who signed and when, next to the language version. Check the layout, not only the words. Right-to-left languages need a mirrored page, and long German compounds break narrow phone screens; test on a small phone before publishing.

Keep a translation memory, meaning a saved list of approved terms and sentences, so that the next menu change does not restart the translation from zero. Date-stamp each language version on the page. When a guest or an inspector compares versions, the dates tell you which one is stale.

Do hotel restaurants have to show allergens and ingredients on the QR page?#

The Food Codex labelling guideline treats hotel, restaurant and café outlets as mass catering places and asks them to give the food name together with allergens, alcohol and pork-derived ingredients, highlighted; since revision 002 it also asks for ingredients and energy values. Confirm your own case against the current text and with your food safety adviser.

The guideline to the Turkish Food Codex Regulation on Food Labelling and Consumer Information was first published on 26 November 2024; the version on KAYSİS (opens in a new tab) dated 7 November 2026 is revision 002 of 10 March 2026 (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry). It notes that HORECA, meaning hotel, restaurant and café, is also used as a term for mass catering places, and defines a mass catering place as a business where food is made ready and offered to the final consumer.

Item 41.2 asks for the name of the food with information on the allergens, alcohol and pork-derived ingredients it contains; item 41.5 asks for those to be highlighted rather than buried in a paragraph. Since revision 002, item 41.3 adds ingredients and energy value for the food served. Energy values need portion data, which means the recipe file, not the supplier label, becomes the source.

Item 41.4 allows the information on menus, boards, brochures, QR codes, digital screens and similar means, so a QR page is an accepted channel. The deadlines in item 47 differ by business type: nationwide chains by 1 July 2026, businesses with three or more branches inside one province by 31 December 2026, and all other mass catering places by 31 December 2026 for ingredients and by 31 December 2027 for energy values. Check which line your property falls on, and check it against the current text rather than this summary.

The operational consequence: the chef owns recipe and portion data, the menu owner publishes it, and a recipe change is a menu change. Without that link the page is decorative. The guest safety routine behind this is covered in food allergies in hotel restaurants and buffets.

One code or several: outlets, room service and the pool bar?#

One page per outlet and one stable address per page. The guest's context decides what the page must show, and a code that opens the wrong outlet's menu is worse than no code.

Separate the outlets: main restaurant, lobby café, pool bar, beach bar, room service and any outlet with its own opening hours or its own price list. Each gets its own page and its own printed code. Match the code to the place it is scanned: a card in the room opens room service; a table tent at the pool bar opens the pool bar; a code at the entrance opens the outlet's current list and hours.

All-inclusive properties need two lines on every page: what is included in the guest's board basis, and what carries a charge. The price list duty still applies to what you sell, and the guest still needs to see it before ordering. Room service pages need the order channel and the tray window stated plainly, plus a phone number as a fallback for guests who will not scan anything.

Multiple entrance doors mean multiple entrance lists, one per door, before any code is discussed. A second door is the most commonly forgotten surface in the building. Set menus, banqueting and event menus are their own documents with their own validity dates; do not fold them into the à la carte page. If the page starts taking orders and payments at the table, the question moves from menus to fiscal devices and documents, closer to the territory of ÖKC in hotel outlets. That is an accountant's question, not a design question.

Who updates the menu, and why must the printed code never change?#

One named owner with a deputy updates the page, and the web address behind the code stays fixed for the life of the print run. Change the page, never the address, or every code already on a table becomes dead paper.

The code encodes a web address. If you move the page to a new address, every printed code, table tent, in-room card and door sticker stops working at once, and you cannot tell which ones are still in service. Keep the address permanent and version the page instead. If a move is unavoidable, keep a redirect from the old address so old prints still land on the right page.

Keep a change log: date, outlet, item, old price, new price, who approved it, and which surfaces were updated. It is the record you can show when a guest produces a photograph of an older list. Reprint the paper when the price changes, and reprint the code only when the code itself fails, for example a damaged print or a change of address.

Test the code the way a guest will: an older phone, a dim restaurant, weak wifi. A page that needs ten seconds and a strong signal will be abandoned. Keep a fallback: a printed list within reach of every service point, and a PDF of the current menu that staff can send or print without calling the marketing team.

Hand over properly. When the menu owner leaves, the address, the price table, the glossary and the change log go with the role, not with the person.

What to do next#

This week, put the three price surfaces side by side for one outlet, name the person who owns them, and fix the entrance list and the table list before you touch the design of the page. The rest follows from that order: one price table, one owner, one stable address behind the code, and a paper list that is reprinted whenever a price moves.