Per Diem

[OneMoreRead]

I apologize if this is a DB.

For those of you who travel, what are your per diem rates for: Hotel (do you have to share a room?), food and car?

Managing budgets is crazy these days, but I can't help but feel like our traveling reporters are getting screwed. Where do we stand with the rest of the business? We're in the 100K-125K circ. range.

Hotel - $55 (must share room)
Food -$35
Car - $30

 

[imjustagirl2]

The hotel, my boss is good with. We don't have to share rooms (well I don't, but I'm also the only female that travels, so maybe that helps).

Cars are reserved through the company, but we have some deal with Avis so we pay twice as much for a rental car as we should.

Food? We get $5 for breakfast, $8 for lunch, 17 for dinner. That's $30. And it's not per diem. If I only spend $8, I don't get to pocket the other $22.

 

[slappy4428]

Five bucks for breakfast? How many McGriddles can you eat on the road?

 

[Jeremy Goodwin]

Haven't traveled with the most recent places I've worked, but when I did it was similar to IJAG. Food was something like $7 for breakfast, $10 for lunch, $20 for dinner, no alcohol on the company dime.

With hotels, my editor was also cool. He told us not to go to the most expensive place in town, but to get a respectable place. We would usually go to mid-range chain that had some sort of free internet connection. Guys would share rooms.

Was the $55 for hotel per person or for the room? I was covering college football when I traveled and most hotels jacked up the price for home football game weekends to make more money, so what would be a $60 room in a bad hotel was now $100.

 

[imjustagirl2]

I'd LOVE to have a jacked-up rate of $100.

I book a year in advance, and still pay upward of $150 sometimes. Try to get a room at a NASCAR race a month before, and the Motel 8 is charging $259 (if they have rooms left).

 

[Angola!]

Our paper has slashed traveling, but when we still get to go it is as follows:
The cheapest hotel possible, but one that has wireless
Drive your own car and get .32 cents per mile
$25 per day for food (though, I was told by a higherup that we really get $30, but some people think we don't and no one is going to tell them different).
Also, like IJAG, it is not a per diem. We expense everything at the end of the month.

 

[CollegeJournalist]

I'd LOVE to have a jacked-up rate of $100.

I book a year in advance, and still pay upward of $150 sometimes. Try to get a room at a NASCAR race a month before, and the Motel 8 is charging $259 (if they have rooms left).

That's because at a NASCAR race, 90 percent of the fans view Motel 8 as the 5* hotel. It's the most popular place in town.

 

[Tom Petty]

wow - i don't question my people because they never abuse the system. in fact, i recently told one guy on staff he should start staying in nicer places. sure enough, he has.

 

[BertoltBrecht]

Hotel - $0
Food -$0
Car - $0.235 cents per mile. (The extra five is for good luck)

 

[Mizzougrad96]

$30 a day is pretty brutal... It depends where you are, but that pretty much either forces you to skip meals or stick to the dollar menu...

Good luck eating on $30 if you have to eat in airports...

 

[Moderator1]

We have a simple rule - be reasonable. Don't eat the $40 dinner every night but don't eat fast food every meal. There are days I only eat once or twice. And there are days I have a $10 breakfast, a $18 lunch and a $35-40 dinner. And no one says a word.

I once spent four days, three nights in NY. Total meals were about $120, with $66 of it in one meal at Smith and Wollensky's. That's way over the norm for one meal but the overall cost was reasonable, very reasonable.

 

[Cosmo]

Yeah, that $55 hotel thing seems ridiculous. Hell, you can't get a Motel 6 for that rate in some cities.

I just stayed in a $119 hotel room, and my higher-ups don't have a problem with that, especially since it was just one night. I try to keep hotel rooms for football trips in the $89-$129 a night range, depending on where I am.

I'm sure if for some reason someone else came with me on one of my road trips, we'd split the room. That's how our ACC guys do it.

 

[Mira]

I usually book a room for no more than $110 per night, unless I'm in Indy or Chicago. It doesn't hurt to have AAA either to get a bit extra knocked off.

I spend about $15-25 per day on food, but I usually spend less, or I get so busy that I only eat lunch or dinner. I don't eat breakfast, just give me my coffee.

Our current mileage rate is .32 per mile, which they reimburse.

 

[trifectarich]

I could get by on $30 a day for meals, perhaps doing the comp continental breakfast and then getting a decent dinner. But $55 for a hotel . . . uh uh . . . couldn't do that.

 

[Tom Petty]

I could get by on $30 a day for meals, perhaps doing the comp continental breakfast and then getting a decent dinner. But $55 for a hotel . . . uh uh . . . couldn't do that.

i think sharing the room is as big or bigger than the $55.

 

[Some Guy]

Our paper has gone through a lot of financial-related **** recently. Thank God nobody has thought about giving us some kind of screwed-up per diem.

We operate on the "be reasonable" principle as well. I do my best to stay in the cheapest Marriott property available Usually, I can get something for under $100. No, we don't have to share rooms.

There are no limits on meals, but, again, I don't abuse the system. I eat the free continental breakfast when available. I'm not going to eat at the $100-a-plate steakhouse. Most of my meals are at the level of a Chili's or an Applebee's. Sometimes I'll even eat fast food for under $8. Very, very rarely will I eat I meal that costs more than $40. If I do, I'll make up for it somewhere else on the trip.

 

[The Rules of Golf]

We're on the "reasonable" spectrum, too. Have to share hotel rooms when the columnist comes, which has to be hell on him — I snore like a sawmill.

I try to stay around $5-10 for lunch and no more than $20 for dinner. I usually either don't eat breakfast or I eat the hotel's free one, so there's that.

By using the Marriott VIP rate I can usually find a very nice hotel for a pretty reasonable rate. Example: In a Major American City two weekends ago, I spent $89 of the company's money for a 4-star joint right downtown in the major entertainment/party district. Swank.

 

[RedCanuck]

Hotel - $0
Food -$0
Car - $0.235 cents per mile. (The extra five is for good luck)

Do we work together?

 

[Angola!]

I could get by on $30 a day for meals, perhaps doing the comp continental breakfast and then getting a decent dinner. But $55 for a hotel . . . uh uh . . . couldn't do that.

This generally is how we are expected to stay under the $30 a day for meals, by eating complimentary breakfast.

In Texas, you can always find hotels for less than $55. For some reason they have the cheapest Motel6's in the history of man. I stayed at one on I-20 recently for a whopping $29.95 a night.

 

[imjustagirl2]

I want the Marriott VIP rate!