Posts
I’ve always been annoyed by the process of finding hotels at per diem rates in DC. I’ve only had to do it a few times, as I started out as a local hire (where you get no per diem) and I bought a house in DC in conjunction with long-term training. While waiting to close on the house, we needed to find a per-diem hotel that allowed pets, which significantly narrowed the field (I highly recommend staying at a Kimpton hotel if traveling with pets). Now, I’m heading back for a three-day training at FSI and I wanted a place to stay. While all the major chains allow you to choose the Government/Military rate after you’ve settled on a property, if their rate is unavailable or higher than per diem, you have to go all the way back to the search results. It would be easy enough for all the hotel chains to simply put the option on the search page, but instead all built “special” search pages which I’ve collected here:
Wyndham offers the discount as well, but not in the DC area so I’m not including them. I prefer Hilton and Marriott, mostly on the strength of their rewards programs. You can always check FedRooms.com or the list of Hotels at Per Diem, but neither is inclusive and both sites will return all hotels that offer the rate – whether the rate is available for your specified travel dates or not. Kind of defeats the purpose, no?
Tags: hotel chains, lodging, per diem, rewards programs, TDY, Travel
3 Responses to “Finding hotels at per diem rates”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:07 am
However, buyer beware. Many, if not most, of the “gov’t” rates on hotels sites are over per diem, have 72 hour cancellation policies and are subject to change at a moments notice. They are completely unmanaged, except by the hotel’s yield management groups. http://www.fedrooms.com guaranteed rates, 4pm same day cancel and no add-on fees or rate changes. We guarantee it.
Tracy Shook, FedRooms
http://www.fedrooms.com
May 5th, 2009 at 1:36 am
It’s certainly a good sign that FedRooms is checking their trackbacks diligently! I’ve just booked three different stays with Hilton hotels at the government per diem rate ($209 for DC, $285 for NYC while I’m traveling) and both had same-day 1pm cancellation, vice the 4pm advertised by FedRooms. Clearly, FedRooms has a good service as they’re advertised on GSA’s own website. My biggest beef was that as I was searching for rooms on specific travel dates, I was given the list of nearly every hotel in the DC area that advertised that rate, but when I clicked on the rate information for each one, they said the rate was unavailable – if FedRooms can have your search restricted to only hotels that have vacancies at the government rate during your chosen travel dates, then it becomes the service to beat.
February 11th, 2011 at 10:43 am
another option to use is http://GovRooms.com – Although you get the same issue with availability it does use a Google map based search, so instead of an alpha listing you see which hotels are closest to where you need to be – and the map also shows military bases, restaurants, etc, which I have found to be useful. They have over 18,000 hotels, so at least a good selection. My complaint with Fedrooms is that they only list hotels that pay them commission – so their list is very small – and chains like Marriott won’t list with them.