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Konstantin posted:I am a board member of a nonprofit, and we often need to travel to conferences. One of the biggest expenses is hotel rooms, and with the greater diversity of our staff, it has become clear that we need some sort of formal policy about the sharing of rooms. Ideally, everyone would get a private room, but that would lead to us being able to send fewer people, and these conferences are valuable for staff development and networking with allied organizations. Is there a good model policy about this we can review and adopt so that everyone has the opportunity to participate while respecting people's boundaries? I think you're asking the wrong questions. As a default for any adult in the U.S., when traveling on business, be it non-profit or for, the standard should be--and is as far as I'm concerned--that everyone gets their own hotel room. The question becomes how to you accomplish that on an affordable basis? There are numerous paths to explore here including location, rate negotiations, and use of corporate rate codes (though this can be questionable). As for location, staying at the conference hotel is convenient to be sure but is there another location nearby where ride shares or a rental car make sense in order to save on the ADR (average daily rate)? Hotels, like airlines, change their rates regularly to maximize their yields and they know that a big convention with business travelers means an opportunity to maximize those yields. Staying somewhere else nearby can not only lower your costs, it can also provide your attendees a respite from the conference insanity. Taking that concept a step further, if you have multiple people traveling, you can reach out to the hotel's revenue manager and talk about discounted rates because you're a non-profit. While a different situation, I negotiated a discounted rate with a hotel that my wife was going to stay at three nights per week for several months while she was in graduate school. It makes sense to the hotel to do that because they're gaining a loyal customer with almost guaranteed revenue. It saved me a bundle (and got me lifetime platinum with Marriott for all that's worth....which is nothing). If your nonprofit is a small shop and you're only sending one or two people to conferences, I would also consider the use of corporate rate codes. It is, strictly speaking, not something that you're supposed to do but limited use of those on an individual basis has saved me many thousands of dollars over the years for my travel, both business and personal. If you're doing anything organized, with a group, or via a travel agent this approach carries dangers because if the property asks to verify that you're allowed to use that rate code and you can't, they may switch you to the rack rate for that day which is likely a lot more. Again, there are risks with this approach but I thought it was worth mentioning. Anyway, yeah, everyone gets their own hotel room. The challenge is figuring out how to make that work.
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Mar 11, 2024 14:23
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Beef Of Ages posted:Anyway, yeah, everyone gets their own hotel room. The challenge is figuring out how to make that work. yeah, this. i'd never consider sharing a room. send fewer people or adjust your budgeting for it.
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Mar 12, 2024 00:13
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pmchem posted:yeah, this. i'd never consider sharing a room. send fewer people or adjust your budgeting for it. 
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Mar 12, 2024 00:49
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Have we considered making everyone share a room? How many human bodies can we get into a space?
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Mar 12, 2024 02:42
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Cemetry Gator posted:Have we considered making everyone share a room? Man, and I thought Dave was being metaphorical when he called this place a clown car
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Mar 12, 2024 08:06
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You might find it's cheapest to just rent a ballroom and have everyone bring a sleeping bag and sleep on the floor. And then just sponge bath in the lobby bathroom. Before bedtime turn out the lights; everyone can pass around a flashlight and tell ghost stories. The first employee to fall asleep, put their hand in a bowl of warm water. So much fun! Team building yay
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Mar 12, 2024 10:42
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Konstantin posted:Is there a good model policy about this we can review and adopt so that everyone has the opportunity to participate while respecting people's boundaries? Yes, the good model policy is 'each member of staff gets their own hotel room'
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Mar 12, 2024 13:01
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On an average conference trip, how much of the total travel bill would half of a hotel room even be?
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Mar 12, 2024 13:28
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Konstantin posted:I am a board member of a nonprofit, and we often need to travel to conferences. One of the biggest expenses is hotel rooms, and with the greater diversity of our staff, it has become clear that we need some sort of formal policy about the sharing of rooms. Ideally, everyone would get a private room, but that would lead to us being able to send fewer people, and these conferences are valuable for staff development and networking with allied organizations. Is there a good model policy about this we can review and adopt so that everyone has the opportunity to participate while respecting people's boundaries? I work with a non-profit that sometimes has college students involved in the work we do. Up until about five years ago, students often shared rooms in the city where our large annual event is held. Several years ago the national top dogs of the non-profit said hell no to the student room sharing for liability reasons. So now we just have fewer students involved. Sucks in terms of less opportunities for students to work with the event, but it was the right thing to do. In other words…suck it up, no sharing.
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Mar 12, 2024 13:40
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I shared a hotel room once when I was a 21 year old intern for a trip to a trade show in Nashville. I'm pretty sure the only way I was going to be able to go was if I bunked up with someone else and carpooled and was basically invisible to the budget. I roomed with like a 55 year old dude. He was fine and we both tried to ignore the weirdness of it but looking back, that was really strange. If the roles were reversed there is no way I'd let my company stuff some intern in the same hotel room as me, even taking the aspects of academia or non-profit into account.
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Mar 12, 2024 14:39
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What was the big famously frugal company whose policy was two-to-a-room for all travel? Walmart at the time? I was once asked to attend an all-department two-day on-site, with a weekend retreat beforehand, where we would be sharing rooms dorm-style. I noped the gently caress out of a) giving up my weekend, and b) sharing a room with a coworker. Can't afford privacy and dignity, can't afford to send everyone.
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Mar 12, 2024 15:56
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There was that guy who used to post here who would have to drag a suitcase of instant noodles around while traveling with his seniors and it sounded like the were four up in rooms but they were all from HK or the mainland, so different norms.
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Mar 12, 2024 17:35
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Vortex Street posted:I work with a non-profit that sometimes has college students involved in the work we do. Up until about five years ago, students often shared rooms in the city where our large annual event is held. I think students sharing a room is pretty different from employees sharing a room, particular since a school-student relationship is far different than an employer-employee one. One of my first international trips abroad was in high school and we all had to share rooms. The trip wouldn't have been possible without doing so and that trip was one of my fondest memories.
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Mar 13, 2024 20:58
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In my 10 years of frequent flying, I’ve never gotten a delay notification the night before a flight. AA2331 was scheduled for a 9:05am departure, CLE-DFW tomorrow and I just got a notification that it’s been delayed to 9:25am. Both the AA App and FlightAware show the inbound coming in tonight, landing in about 30 minutes (11:50pm). What could be the reason for a delay the night before the flight when it will already be on the ground? To clarify, I don’t really care about a 20min delay, I’ve just never seen that happen before and wonder what the reason could be.
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Mar 14, 2024 04:14
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Smells like crew rest maybe? Or maybe your crew isn't on that flight?
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Mar 14, 2024 04:18
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Yep it's crew rest. Happens at outstations more frequently than hubs or places where there is a crew base.
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Mar 14, 2024 04:22
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i fly airplanes posted:I think students sharing a room is pretty different from employees sharing a room Not anymore, when it’s a hotel room at a conference/event and involves students from different universities. For this event, the conference organizers would be assigning strangers to room with each other; they are the only participants with whom this was done , and the risk of it going wrong was high. My point was, if it’s too risky for this large non-profit with expensive lawyers to invite/sponsor students to a conference and put them in shared hotel rooms from a liability and complicated room assignment (read: room assignments based on gender) standpoint …then it’s too risky for adults, too, from said standpoint. TL;DR: pay up for single occupancy or risk assault lawsuits Vortex Street fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Mar 14, 2024 |
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Mar 14, 2024 05:00
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FunOne posted:Smells like crew rest maybe? Or maybe your crew isn't on that flight? Beef Of Ages posted:Yep it's crew rest. Happens at outstations more frequently than hubs or places where there is a crew base. Ahh, it could be that, makes sense. I didn’t think about that with it being non-hub. My main concern was that I then plan for a later start and then when I wake up I find they change it back, but it’s still 9:25, so I’m good.
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Mar 14, 2024 12:54
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Man, traveling with a 1 year old overseas is rough, even in business. Now I understand why the 1% bring a "helper" along.
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Mar 14, 2024 19:36
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When I worked at a hip (and cash rich) software company where we threw a big week-long conference every year, those of us staffing booths could REQUEST to share a room if we really really wanted to go to the conference. We could pick our roommates. It was kind of hosed up looking back on it? The conference was a work hard, party harder vibe and we were all hot 20-something salespeople with no-holds barred AMEX limits (“happy hour for a customer!”)… also there were no gender restrictions on roommate choices as long as both people agreed. lol. Anyway, don’t let people share rooms, I lived that life and it’s a recipe for disaster.
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Mar 15, 2024 16:02
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I've only shared a room with ghosts. I love the conversations that start with "Where are you staying?" "Oh, that place." I don't really care if it's the haunted hotel, the murder hotel, the "hiter gave a speech on the balcony after annexing this territory" hotel. As long as it's not a fleabag or the kind of place you look at and you just know if you were going to murder someone, it would be there.
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Mar 15, 2024 17:32
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Mandalay posted:Man, traveling with a 1 year old overseas is rough, even in business. Now I understand why the 1% bring a "helper" along. Its gets better by like 2-2.5. By that point my daughter had the attention span to be locked into a tablet and Disney movies for ~4-5 hours, which at least covers transcon pretty well. We do SFO->LHR->DUB in April when she is 3, we will see how that goes (spoiler: probably not well).
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Mar 15, 2024 22:05
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ROJO posted:Its gets better by like 2-2.5. By that point my daughter had the attention span to be locked into a tablet and Disney movies for ~4-5 hours, which at least covers transcon pretty well. We do SFO->LHR->DUB in April when she is 3, we will see how that goes (spoiler: probably not well). It was his third international trip. He's done LAX-LHR-GOT, LAX-HKG-BKK-USM, and LAX-LHR-LIS. He's done domestic to AUS, IAH, MIA, BOS, and SFO. Honestly, he is doing just fine for an infant but after each long leg I feel like we need a day to just rest and recover. He's more well travelled at 1 than I was at like...25.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:46
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What the gently caress is Delta thinking. Had to adjust my personal travel to go directly from DTW-ZRH, through way of JFK. OK, fine.... and then as I comment to a co-worker about how Delta still has 767s on some routes, I realized I didn't check what they fly on JFK-ZRH... of course it's a loving 767. They wanted $7500 on that route to sit in the old D1 product (I did not do that). Looking at the seatmap, for a flight 2 weeks out, 15 unsold D1 seats still sitting there with a $3519 upgrade cost. Do the banks just pay that, or what? Maybe for an extra $1K or ~100K skymiles I'd do it, but  at that on an ancient airframe (that I don't believe has been updated).
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Mar 16, 2024 00:46
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Oh, also, next week I have to return from a trip ending in Paris, and I am going to wake up, take the Eurostar to London, and fly home via LHR rather than go through CDG. In the time it would take for me to get to CDG / deal with that, I can quite literally go to the United Kingdom and get to Heathrow. Do never go through CDG.
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Mar 16, 2024 00:48
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movax posted:What the gently caress is Delta thinking. Is it worse than the BA 6-across business class setup? Somehow they still manage to fill that up. I flew it last week and dang that is claustrophobic.
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Mar 16, 2024 01:10
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movax posted:What the gently caress is Delta thinking. Some of the 767s are updated to the new D1 product, but not all of them. The new product also doesn't have a door but it's far roomier than the old seats. I've only seen the old product domestically to HNL and to JFK. Europe is probably hit or miss, but I agree that it's disappointing that they're not speeding up the refurbish and still have the old seats flying. I'd also keep an eye out for the upgrade price dropping, seems DL is all over the place with these.
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Mar 16, 2024 02:21
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ROJO posted:Its gets better by like 2-2.5. By that point my daughter had the attention span to be locked into a tablet and Disney movies for ~4-5 hours, which at least covers transcon pretty well. We do SFO->LHR->DUB in April when she is 3, we will see how that goes (spoiler: probably not well). Yeah 1 to 2.5 is rough, iPad is magic for airplanes. My kid turned 2.5 about six months ago and interest in iPad went way, way up; she relishes travel now as it means she gets unlimited iPad time.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:24
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taco show posted:When I worked at a hip (and cash rich) software company where we threw a big week-long conference every year, those of us staffing booths could REQUEST to share a room if we really really wanted to go to the conference. We could pick our roommates. When I was at Twitch they never said if you wanted to go to reinvent or twitchcon or PAX you had to share, but there was a roommate column in the signup spreadsheet. I just always left it blank or put “nobody” and my manager backed me up 100%. loving nope on sharing rooms on work trips ever. Hell my first trip with a hip company way back I had to share a king sized bed with my buddy, not even a separate double bed. Anyway our work kickoff this summer is thankfully separate rooms by default, but there’s some unclear incentive (a “special surprise”) if you share a room with a coworker.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:48
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Hadlock posted:Yeah 1 to 2.5 is rough, iPad is magic for airplanes. My kid turned 2.5 about six months ago and interest in iPad went way, way up; she relishes travel now as it means she gets unlimited iPad time. yeah we are the same way. "her iPad" is my old mini, and she only gets it on long car rides and the plane (and she is really good about forgetting about it at other times). got her some nice bluetooth headphones for kids and she just gets locked into Frozen/Frozen 2/Moana/Brave/Toy Story/etc for hours. edit: poo poo sorry, forgot this was the business travel thread. uhhhhhh, we just changed our corporate policy so we can use personal cards for travel, so I'm about to make it rain amex, chase, and hyatt points.
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Mar 16, 2024 05:49
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movax posted:Oh, also, next week I have to return from a trip ending in Paris, and I am going to wake up, take the Eurostar to London, and fly home via LHR rather than go through CDG. In the time it would take for me to get to CDG / deal with that, I can quite literally go to the United Kingdom and get to Heathrow. Would push back on this. CDG is totally fine as an O/D airport. Not ideal, T2 security can be a bit annoying, but it’ll do. And if you’re flying AF it’s even p acceptable airside. It’s not like the RER takes much longer than the Heathrow express to boot. Do never transit through CDG though. Particular since I can guarantee AFKLM will also have the same destination served through AMS. Living in Geneva, if somewhere isn’t served from GVA, and/or the Swiss prices are insane to connect through ZRH, I’ll prefer to get the train to Paris and then to CDG than to fly to CDG. Particularly for an afternoon transcon where I can have lunch in town on the way.
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Mar 16, 2024 09:03
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Yeah I dunno about the claim that staying in paris and getting to and through CDG is more than getting to Gare Du Nord, the train (ever been on one that went Mx? I have), st pancras jump to paddington and then heathrow express or probably via Thameslink to Elizabeth to Heathrow Like yeah it sucks but it’s not a 4 hour process and at least 1hr of that is public transpo.
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Mar 16, 2024 11:40
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ROJO posted:edit: poo poo sorry, forgot this was the business travel thread. uhhhhhh, we just changed our corporate policy so we can use personal cards for travel, so I'm about to make it rain amex, chase, and hyatt points. I am soooo jealous rn.
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Mar 16, 2024 14:01
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Hadlock posted:Yeah 1 to 2.5 is rough, iPad is magic for airplanes. My kid turned 2.5 about six months ago and interest in iPad went way, way up; she relishes travel now as it means she gets unlimited iPad time. We've taken our toddler internationally three times now. 3 months was great: he just slept in the bassinet the entire flight. The last two times have been less great, especially with the jet lag. Next trip is in May and he'll be a little over two. Thinking about caving and finally getting an iPad since he finally likes watching shows. 
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Mar 16, 2024 14:09
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Jean-Paul Shartre posted:Would push back on this. CDG is totally fine as an O/D airport. Not ideal, T2 security can be a bit annoying, but it’ll do. And if you’re flying AF it’s even p acceptable airside. It’s not like the RER takes much longer than the Heathrow express to boot. Ha, I was starting to worry. I am going to NE France for work next week and fly SEA-CDG. Never been before and I have not done enough pre-trip airport research. I've definitely heard of CDG's reputation. I'm going with a colleague who doesn't seem to believe in the existence of trains, public transit, or even walking short distances instead of driving and is the one organizing the trip so this is going to be fun. Nice change of pace from my rural Midwest US trips though.
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Mar 16, 2024 16:06
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Residency Evil posted:Thinking about caving and finally getting an iPad since he finally likes watching shows. Literally every person on a plane is doing this via an ebook reader, their own tablet/laptop, or the in-flight entertainment. Don’t make your kid sit there bored for hours and hours for imaginary points. Don’t make everyone else have to deal with your kid having a meltdown from being bored on the flight. Do make sure you know what your kid is watching especially YouTube, even the YouTube Kids can have some really strange content. Well so I’ve heard, don’t have kids but every friend-parent has told me this.
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Mar 16, 2024 16:09
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gariig posted:Literally every person on a plane is doing this via an ebook reader, their own tablet/laptop, or the in-flight entertainment. Don’t make your kid sit there bored for hours and hours for imaginary points. Don’t make everyone else have to deal with your kid having a meltdown from being bored on the flight. Strong agree We set very strong expectations that iPad is for travel only, literally, "this is a special treat since we're on an airplane" before turning it on every time, and only longer trips and it's been fine. We recently did a 9 day trip and when we came back only the first two days did the kid ask for the iPad and then gave up. "Are you on an airplane?" is a surprisingly effective hard counter iPad also has an app timer that'll automatically turn off the app at which point you can go "uh oh it's out of battery  " or if the plane hasn't landed yet "wow daddy fixed it!"
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Mar 16, 2024 16:58
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sellouts posted:Yeah I dunno about the claim that staying in paris and getting to and through CDG is more than getting to Gare Du Nord, the train (ever been on one that went Mx? I have), st pancras jump to paddington and then heathrow express or probably via Thameslink to Elizabeth to Heathrow I was definitely hyperbolic… I just have had two 2.5 hour experiences entering CDG (check-in line + exit customs) that scarred me that resulted in me coming within a few minutes of missing my flight.
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Mar 16, 2024 18:06
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ROJO posted:edit: poo poo sorry, forgot this was the business travel thread. uhhhhhh, we just changed our corporate policy so we can use personal cards for travel, so I'm about to make it rain amex, chase, and hyatt points. I (finally) start a new job on Monday and have to book a trip for the next week so once I get my login information and change my password, my first stop is the corporate travel policy and then whatever booking portal they use. I am sincerely hoping they don't force corporate credit cards because I need them tasty points in my life.
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Mar 16, 2024 19:10
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Most corporate cards you can ask to associate the points on your personal acct- that’s what I’ve always done with my work amex. If you don’t have a personal amex already I think it’s $65/yr. I also kept all my points when I left my last job.
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Mar 20, 2024 04:02
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