Working hours in hotels: the 45-hour week, the four-month balancing period and night shifts

Under Labour Law No. 4857, normal working time in Türkiye is at most 45 hours a week. Hours may be spread unevenly across days, never more than 11 in any one day, if the average balances over a set period: two months as the general rule, four months in tourism, six with a collective agreement. Night work is capped at seven and a half hours unless the worker consents in writing.

The August rota is written in pencil because it changes every week: extra covers at the desk, a night shift nobody wants, then a quiet November when the same people need fewer hours. The law allows that shape. It asks the hotel to prove the arithmetic. After reading this guide to working hours law for hotels in Türkiye, you will be able to read your own seasonal rota as an inspector would: against the 45-hour week, the 11-hour day, the four-month balancing period and the night rules.

What does Turkish labour law set as the working time limit in hotels?#

Normal working time is at most 45 hours a week, and no working day may exceed 11 hours. Everything else in this article is built on those two numbers.

The 45-hour week is normal working time, not a target. Work beyond it is overtime, which has its own consent, cap and pay rules under Article 41 of Labour Law No. 4857, and its own article in this series on overtime in hotels: consent, the 270-hour cap and pay. By agreement, the weekly hours may be spread unevenly over the working days, as long as no day exceeds 11 hours (Article 63).

The averaging period is two months in general. In tourism it is four months, and a collective agreement can extend it to six (Article 63; Working Time Regulation, Article 5). The daily ceiling of 11 hours holds whatever the average says; the Working Time Regulation repeats it in Article 4 as an absolute limit.

The employer sets the daily and weekly hours inside the balancing period, and sets the period's start and end dates (Working Time Regulation, Article 5). Those dates are a decision, not a discovery made afterwards. These are statutory limits: confirm how they apply to your contracts, your collective agreement and your facility type with a labour law adviser before you rely on them.

One planning note before the mechanics. A hotel that plans to the limit every week has no room left when a flight is delayed or a colleague calls in sick. The rota should sit below the ceiling, not on it.

How does the four-month balancing period (denkleştirme) work?#

Balancing lets a hotel work people longer in the peak weeks and shorter later, as long as the total hours worked over the period do not exceed the total normal hours owed. The mechanism is a trade: after the concentrated week or weeks, the worker works fewer hours, so that total working time does not exceed the total normal time owed (Working Time Regulation, Article 5).

The regulation sets balancing with the parties' written agreement. The written form is not decoration; it is the thing that makes the arrangement a balancing period rather than unrecorded extra hours. In tourism the weekly average may not exceed normal weekly hours over four months, and a collective agreement can extend that to six (Article 63; Regulation, Article 5). The employer sets the daily and weekly hours within the period, and the period's start and end dates (Regulation, Article 5). Write the dates down before the season starts.

Where hours are averaged this way, weeks above 45 hours are not overtime as long as the average stays within normal weekly hours (Article 41 read with Article 63). If the average is exceeded when the period closes, the excess is overtime, with its own consent, annual cap and premium. That is a separate calculation and a separate article.

The trade-off: balancing smooths wage cost across a season, but it only works for a hotel that can show its hours. Without records, the hotel cannot demonstrate the average and loses the argument by default. The same records feed fair hotel shift planning: covering the desk, floors and nights fairly.

When can night work exceed seven and a half hours in a hotel?#

Only in the sectors the law names, tourism among them, and only with the worker's written consent.

For working life, night is a period that starts no later than 20:00, ends no earlier than 06:00 and lasts at most 11 hours (Labour Law No. 4857, Article 69). A hotel defines its own night window inside those outer edges. Night work may not exceed seven and a half hours (Article 69). That is shorter than the daily ceiling on purpose.

In tourism, private security, health services and certain petroleum work, night work may exceed seven and a half hours if the worker's written consent is obtained (Article 69). Overtime may not be done in night work under Article 69: a night shift is not the place to add the extra hours that the day shift could not absorb.

The consent is per worker and in writing. Keep it with the contract file, dated, and review it when the rota changes rather than once at hiring. How consent should be worded and how often it should be renewed is a question for a labour law adviser, not for a template found online.

A practical test: a desk shift from 23:00 to 07:00 is eight hours. In a hotel that is not relying on the tourism exception, that already sits above the night limit.

How should night and day shifts rotate, and what rest sits between them?#

Where the workplace runs day and night on rotating shifts, a worker who spent a working week on nights works days in the following week, and a shift change must be separated by at least 11 hours of uninterrupted rest.

Article 69 sets the rotation: workers who worked nights for one working week work days in the following working week, and a two-week rotation may also be used. A worker whose shift changes may not work the other shift without at least 11 hours of uninterrupted rest (Article 69, last paragraph). The Working Time Regulation adds a second frame: breaks are arranged taking into account 12 hours of uninterrupted rest in every 24 hours, without prejudice to the 11-hour rule on shift change (Regulation, Article 3).

The 11-hour rule is where rotas usually fail, because the gap is counted from the end of the late shift to the start of the next one, not from the end of the contracted day. For example, a receptionist who closes the night audit at 00:30 and is rostered at 09:00 the next morning has eight and a half hours between shifts. That is below the 11-hour floor, even though neither shift on its own breaks a daily limit.

Rotation is also a fairness question. A rota that quietly parks the same two people on nights all season is both a legal risk and a resignation risk. Write the rotation pattern into the rota itself, so that the sequence is visible to the person working it and to whoever checks it later.

What breaks and weekly rest must a hotel give?#

Minimum breaks scale with the length of the working day and do not count as working time, and every seven-day period must contain at least 24 hours of uninterrupted weekly rest.

Article 68 sets the minimum breaks, given around the middle of the working day: 15 minutes for work of four hours or less, half an hour for more than four and up to seven and a half hours, and one hour for more than seven and a half hours. These are minimums and are given in one piece, but contracts may split them in view of climate, season, local custom and the nature of the work. Breaks do not count as working time (Article 68).

Article 46 gives at least 24 hours of uninterrupted rest within each seven-day period, and an unworked weekly rest day is paid in full. Law No. 7553 (Resmî Gazete 14 July 2025, No. 32956) added a rule for accommodation facilities holding a Ministry of Culture and Tourism tourism operation certificate: the weekly rest a worker has earned may be given within the four days after the day it was earned, at the worker's written request or with written consent.

Under that rule, work done on the earned rest day up to the daily normal working time is left out of the overtime calculation, and the worker may withdraw consent with 30 days' written notice (Article 46). In workplaces using the percentage method, the employer pays the weekly rest pay (Article 46). The four-day flexibility is written for a defined group of facilities: check your certificate status and your contracts with an adviser before you build a season on it.

How do you check a seasonal rota against these rules?#

Turn the rota into hours per worker, then test four things: the 11-hour day, the average against the hours owed over the balancing period, the 11-hour gap between shifts, and the night cap.

Step 1: write the balancing period's start and end dates, and the written agreement that sets it. Step 2: calculate the normal hours owed to each worker over the period, as the number of weeks multiplied by 45. Step 3: total the hours actually planned for that worker; the plan must not exceed the hours owed when the period closes.

Step 4: scan every single day for anything above 11 hours, including split shifts and training days. Step 5: scan every shift change for a gap below 11 hours, counting from the real finish time to the real start time. Step 6: check every night shift against seven and a half hours, and confirm a written consent exists wherever the tourism exception is used.

For illustration only: a hotel runs a 16-week season. A receptionist is planned at 54 hours in the busiest week of August and 36 hours in a quiet week of November. The plan is lawful in shape only if the 16-week total stays within 16 × 45 hours and no single day passed 11 hours. The arithmetic, not the intention, is what a check will look at.

What records does a hotel need to show its hours were lawful?#

The employer must document workers' working hours by suitable means, and the balancing agreement, the period's dates and any night-work consent must exist in writing.

The Working Time Regulation requires the employer to document workers' working hours by suitable means (Article 9). Daily start and finish times and rest times are announced to workers by suitable means (Regulation, Article 8). A rota pinned in the back office and never shown to staff does not meet that description.

The balancing agreement, the period's start and end dates, and the night-work consent are the three documents that carry the most weight, because each one is a condition the law attaches to a flexibility. Where the deferred weekly rest under Law No. 7553 is used, the worker's written request or consent, and any 30-day withdrawal notice, belong in the same file.

The time record should agree with the rota and with payroll. Three systems that disagree are worse than one that is imperfect, because the disagreement is what gets examined. Daily operational records, such as a front desk shift handover checklist: cash, arrivals and promises or a night audit close, help corroborate the times when a rota is questioned later. How long to keep each record, and in what form, depends on the document type: confirm retention with an accountant or legal adviser rather than assuming one period covers everything.

What to do next#

Before the next rota is published, write the balancing period's start and end dates, total the normal hours owed to each worker across that period, and check the plan against the 11-hour day, the 11-hour gap between shifts and the night cap. The pieces fit together simply: the 45-hour week is the budget, balancing is how a hotel spends it unevenly across a season, and the daily, night and rest rules are the floor that never moves. Confirm your own contracts, facility status and record-keeping with a labour law adviser. The primary sources are the consolidated text of Labour Law No. 4857 on mevzuat.gov.tr (opens in a new tab) and the Working Time Regulation on mevzuat.gov.tr (opens in a new tab).