Does anyone know anything about government travel?

[Alcibiades]

Someone in my family does a lot of traveling for the government. Whenever they go anywhere, they must (as per policy at their department) buy a fully refundable ticket using the travel agency that has the contract.

Here's the thing--whenever they look for a better fare, they always find one, because most of the bargain tickets out there are non-refundable, and are therefore much cheaper. Almost all tickets sold today are nonrefundable, but the government still overpays for refundable tickets, despite the fact that its status as the world's largest buyer might be able to get it some sort of discount.

Here's an example of the kind of price difference I'm talking about. A Tu-Th trip costs about $250 from RDU to SFO on Travelocity. For a comparable REFUNDABLE ticket, the price is about $1,200-$1,600. This price difference is absolutely typical of the premium paid for refundable tickets. Do the comparison yourself if you don't believe me. Make up a ticket package you think might be typical for a business traveler at the normal price, then click on "change search," "more search options" and select fare type "refundable/changeable only."

I can understand why the government might not want to pay for tickets that then get canceled or changed, but surely, surely somebody somewhere has figured out which government travelers change their flight details or may need to cancel at the last minute. These travelers should be authorized to buy refundable tickets. Most government employees, though, whose travel plans are unlikely to change, would save the government big money if they were at least ALLOWED to buy refundable tickets, which currently they are not.

I think the secret is that Congress knows they would save money if they did this, but the airlines, who are naturally big campaign contributors, don't want them to do this. Here's something concrete we could do to save the government billions, and no one would really suffer. To my knowledge, however, no one has ever brought it up, not even the Republicans who claim to be interested in fiscal responsibility.

anyone else know anything about this?

[MineralMan]

1. I don't think this is a congressional thing...

I'm not sure why the policy is in place, but it sure doesn't make any sense, does it?

I'm betting that the policies are set by the indidual agencies, or by the GSA.

[haele]

2. I've traveled on the government dime before -

There's a specific website the DoD must to use when they book government travel to get their travel vouchers, authorization, and billing code information, whether or not they are going to use a government travel agency. I'm sure that most other agencies that do a lot of travelling have similar programs.
They do have the option to select other than contracted carriers for their flights. They will get flagged if they use that option, but there's a code that they can choose if they found a cheaper flight that wasn't contracted.

The only real difference is that the contracted carriers have seats "set aside" for government travel at government rates, so technically, if there's a seat available, it's guaranteed at that rate rather than an inflated last minute rate. There can be a problem with certain airlines that aren't contracted; they can change your rate on you if there's a glitch with SATO (the government travel agency) or your government credit card billing. Since much of government travel is last minute - I can't tell you how many times I've had a two day notice that I had to get somewhere to take over a task or oversee something - it's important to have a contracted carrier that won't charge $1500 for a flight that would normally be $250.

Haele

[Alcibiades]

5. Thanks

Of course, there's also a lot of travel--such as folks going to court--that has set dates and low rates of cancellation.

Sometimes it will be much cheaper to reimburse someone for their private vehicle, but they are reluctant to do that as well.
:shrug:

[liberal N proud]

3. Many large companies have similar policies

Almost all companies require you to use a specific travel agency even if the trip could be cheaper through another system.

[damntexdem]

4. Let's see, there's a nonrefundable ticket for $250. A trip is canceled, so buy another $250 ticket.

Or pay $1200 for a refundable ticket. Hmm, it's so, so hard to choose.

Or more likely, the $250 ticket costs $100 to CHANGE; but instead a $1500 ticket is bought, requiring no charge for a change. Oh, this is so difficult -- what to do?

Maybe it would be better to just pay $50 million for a private jet! Yeah, why can't government act more like private business?

[PVnRT]

6. Blame the accountants

Spending rules on government projects, for instance, are sometimes byzantine and nonsensical, usually because someone somewhere got a notion of what would save money and got a rule put in despite any evidence backing up their claim.

Transparency and oversight are good; dumb rules need to go.