WASHINGTON, D.C.
The General Services Administration—which sets hotel per diem rates for the federal government—is seeking to reduce travel costs by changing the way it calculates per diem rates.
Currently, GSA solicits room rate data and then determines hotel average daily rates (ADR) by including rates from hotels in the “mid-price range.” Those rates are gathered from independent, midscale, upscale, upper upscale properties. GSA omits rates from economy and luxury hotels from the data as it considers them outside the mid-price range (too low and too high, respectively). After determining ADR for locations throughout the US, GSA then reduces those rates by 5 percent and establishes per diem rates at that discounted level.
Under the proposed new system, GSA may include only lower hotel rates in the mid-price range when calculating ADR. If GSA does so, it will be intentionally reducing room rates rather than reflecting average room rates, according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association. AH&LA is asking the industry to send letters of protest about this idea to their local legislators.
A letter template can be found here.
