GSA DIFFICULTIES
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James Joyner | Wednesday, September 10, 2003 |
Army Times reports the General Services Administration is having substantial difficulty coming up with reasonable estimates of hotel rates in order to adjust government per diem allocations:
The General Services Administration hired Smith Travel Research of Hendersonville, Tenn., to provide comprehensive data on how much hotels charge for their rooms. Generally, the GSA sets the rates by doing its own phone surveys of hotels, which typically yield poor quality data.GSA had planned to use the companyâs market research data to set per diem rates for fiscal 2004, which starts Oct. 1.
But many hotels wouldnât cooperate. The GSA still had to make many follow-up calls as it set new rates. Smith Travel did not have enough data on hotels in 327 of the 453 localities â about 72 percent â where GSA sought data.
Despite the setback, Rhodes said the effort was âa step forward.â Calling hotels one by one produces unreliable data, because only about two-thirds typically respond and even then, information may not be accurate.
The GSA is looking to improve upon this process next year and will encourage hotels to share their room rates with research firms it hires. Next year, the GSA hopes to have data on enough hotels that it wonât have to do its own telephone surveys.
If the government can’t figure out what a hotel room in Des Moine, Iowa goes for, is it any wonder we’re having difficulty estimating the cost of postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq?
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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