USA hotel pricing: GSA rate frequent exceptions

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Mon, 2017-05-08 at 09:56 -0500, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> As you all know, we use the USA's GSA travel rates for USA travel and the
> USA's Department of State rates for international travel.
> 
> Those of us who travel frequently have noticed that it's quite common to
> need a hotel exception in the USA.  I was talking to a USA federal employee
> recently, and finally figured out why: the GSA rates are based on the
> government-negotiated rate at hotel chains.  As such, the rates they're
> based on are ones that we don't have access to when we book as "mere
> mortals".
> 
> Meanwhile, our Treasurer has been (rightly) annoyed that we have so many
> requests for exceptions to the policy, so I was looking for things that
> often need exceptions and seeing what reasonable policy changes we could
> make to limit exception requests.  This USA hotel issue is a big one.
> 
> The question is how to handle it.  Should we investigate what the average
> discount is that government employees get for hotels (N%), and make our
> budget "GSA rate + N%"?
> 
> Another compatible idea that I had was that if you stay in the hotel from
> the list of hotels that the conference organizers recommend, that you can
> have a budget which is N+M%, where M is something between 3 and 5.  (There
> are substantial conference attendance benefits of being nearby the venue and
> our policy should recognize that.)
> 
> Any thoughts on these ideas?

I'm glad to see this finally being addressed.  Particularly when I
travel long-haul and am really jet-lagged, it is most practical to be
at the conference hotel, so I can deal with my jet-lag without also
dragging my body around the city.

I'm also glad the issue of the unrealistic GSA rates is finally
explained.  In general, I wish there were less rules, and more 'please
use your best judgement'.  Cash is easy to track and easy to crack down
on, but international trips also take a lot of valuable time and
energy, some of which could be better addressed to the reason for the
travel, but which can't so easily be seen in the receipts.

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba