Lodging rates are now based on lodging cost Monday through Thursday. This is good for places that have cheaper rates on the weekend, which used to bring the average lodging price down (New York, Washington). Its bad if you have to stay over the weekend where the prices goes up on the weekend (Atlantic City, Las Vegas).

Travelers do not get comp time when there time is otherwise compensated, such as while getting overtime or holiday pay. On holidays, you can get comp time for time over 8 hours (the 8 hours covered by holiday pay).

In most cases you need to put in for it ahead of time. We will see if there is an exception for times when we get stuck (flight delay, etc.) in travel mode.

Example: You miss the last flight of the evening and have to spend the night. You may get comp time from the end of your normal working hours until you check in at your hotel. Any time spent at meals does not count. You will also get comp time for time spent returning to the airport, the normal airport wait time (usually 1-2 hours), your flight time, and your return home time, assuming these are not your normal working hours (i.e. Saturday).

Per diem rates will be dropping in most of the top 50 markets. The post 9/11 slump gave these markets artificially low numbers last year. The rates are expected to go back up next year, but for now, good luck finding cheap lodging. See the Federal Discount Lodging and Lodging Success Program above for some good rates.

Old News from 2000: Per Diem rates may be adjusted by 25% to pay for high-cost rooms at conferences. They have finally recognized that the hotels that host conferences charge too much and usually only have between 0 and 1 government rate rooms available during the conference. Changes that occurred this past year include accounting for room tax separately and not including it in the per diem rates. This makes figuring out which hotels are under per diem will be easier. Areas around metropolitan areas now have separate rates. Shoulder rates are included between high and low season rates making the list of possible per diem rates even longer.

Some good general government travel information can be found on the General Services Administration's Travel Overview. They have a link to the US Government Passenger Transportation Handbook that covers many of the travel regulations.

DOD is moving to an electronic travel request and payment system, the Defense Travel System. While the system still has some bugs and shortfalls, it looks like it will be a much more efficient system with faster payments. Find out more on their web site along with a long list of FAQs.

You can find out what the Per Diem is. This page is maintained by the Per Diem, Travel and Transportation Allowance Committee. They have searches for both CONUS and OCONUS locations. For non-government types, that's the lower 48 and everywhere else in the world, respectively.

The General Services Administration has a list of states that take the tax exempt forms including some state specific forms in PDF format. Here is a generic tax exempt form in PDF format:

This year, the new rates start on 1 October instead of 1 January to match up with the fiscal year. Looks like the basic rates will stay the same at $55 for room and $30 for meals and incidentals.

You can get the distance to a location (along with a map and directions) on the Defense Table of Official Distances page. You will need to get a password and register first. Otherwise, you can use the mileage on the Defense Travel System.

FedRooms by GSA has links to hotels with per diem rate hotels. They also have hotels that offer the rates to government employees for leisure travel. The official travel page has a search engine to find hotels in the city you are going to. The Leisure travel page is an Excel spreedsheet that contains links to the hotel websites along with the special rate information. Clicking on the links could be problamatic, so you made need to cut and paste the addresses into your browser.

OGP has a link to the OAG's Hotels@Per Diem. Coverage for smaller cities seems to be getting better. The site is easy to use, with a drop-down menu to select a country (only US and Puerto Rico for now), state and city. Information about the hotels is minimal, including only name address and phone number.

The Federal Discount Lodging web page also lists hotels that discount to Federal employees. Their new format works a lot better, just enter the city and state and you'll get a list of under per diem hotels. It does have some problems, though. It lists all of the hotels in one city on a single page and in no particular order. They don't acknowledge the hotels in the Lodging Success Program (below). The hotel information is minimal. They only include the address, phone number, rate, and whether they have parking. Has anyone out there ever been to a hotel that didn't have parking?

National Capital Region	Redstone Arsenal, AL
Fort Belvoir, VA	Fort Rucker, AL
Fort Lee, VA	Miami, FL
Fort Eustis, VA	Fort Sam Houston/San Antonio, TX
Fort Monroe, VA	Fort Bliss, TX
OTJAGSA (Charlottesville, VA)	Camp Pendleton, CA
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD	Fort Sill, OK
Fort Meade, MD	Fort Knox, KY
Carlisle Barracks, PA	Fort Leonard Wood, MO
Atlanta, GA

They have some nice hotels in the program, but it helps to peruse the listings before you call. Then ask for the specific hotel that you want. This is a good thing, because we are required to stay in these hotels (us Army folks). The hotels are considered government lodging.

If you are looking for a BOQ, try the MWR Housing site that has all of them listed. The site includes the installation, reservation e-mail, phone number, and FAX number, the cost, number of rooms, and the installation web site.

For those of you using Carlson Wagonlit to make your travel arrangements, you can check on your itinerary on the Virtually There Trip Review Web Page. Just enter your SABRE reservation number and last name. Let me know if you can get the PDA function to work.

You can find the government contract carrier at FedTravel. Here you can check on the contract flight carrier, flight times, and cost. They also have rental car contract companies and rates.

The US Department of State's Travel and Living Abroad page has a wealth of information on international travel, including getting passports and visas, travel alerts, embassy web sites, airline statistics and safety data, health information, and customs information.

If you travel to and from the U.S. frequently, you may want to get the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPASS) card. This and your hand print let you come through customs much faster than normal.

MWR also has leisure travel at their Off Duty Travel site. Here they have travel deals for military and DOD civilians. They also have links to the airlines, Amtrak, car rental companies and cruise lines.

If you have any comments, if you find a link that doesn't work, or you have a link you think I should add, send me an E-Mail at Meckelnburg@prodigy.net


Defense Travel System	Hotels@Per Diem	Airline Schedules
CONUS Per Diem	Federal Discount Lodging	Airline City Pairs
OCONUS Per Diem	Lodging Success Program	GSA Airline City Pairs
States Tax Exempt Forms	Virtually There	Leisure Travel