Government employees hoping to spend their annual departmental retreat in a high-profile vacation destination such as Las Vegas or Orlando are now primed to expect something more sedate, such as Denver or St. Louis, as a result of new policies being implemented to avoid the appearance of extravagance.
According to internal emails obtained by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA), agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice are instituting new guidelines regarding where conferences can be held, which exclude many cities that traditionally host thousands of business travelers a year.
For example, when an employee of the New York, New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas tried to book a conference with the FBI recently, she was turned down. The USTA learned that FBI officials had been told by those higher up the ladder to avoid "locations and accommodations that give the appearance of being lavish," with Las Vegas and Orlando being first on the list.
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Instead, agencies like the USDA are promoting alternate destinations such as
Chicago, Denver,
Milwaukee, Phoenix,
Kansas City, Portland, St. Louis, and
Washington, DC. Locations have to meet three main criteria: they must be a travel hub, they must be low in cost, and they must be perceived as a "non-resort" location.
Though the rule-setting General Services Administration has never banned any specific locations, there can be no doubt that individual government agencies are trying their best to pick under-the-radar places in order to avoid the intense negative media scrutiny faced in the past by companies such as AIG.
The troubled insurance giant famously took a group of several hundred agents to a luxury resort in Dana Point, California, last October, just one week after receiving billions in taxpayer bailout money. The media backlash was immediate and intense, resulting in a major dent to the company's image.
More recently, the Social Security Administration was slammed for holding a retreat for hundreds of employees at Phoenix's swanky Biltmore Hotel. However, the SSA defended the decision to hold the conference there, saying it actually offered the cheapest per-night rate of any of the hotels under consideration.
Officials with the USTA and other travel industry associations are fighting back against this unofficial blacklist on the grounds that it generally makes no sense and hurts the affected cities.
More than 2.4 million American jobs are hospitality-related, but thousands of them have been eliminated over the past year as companies have slashed their travel budgets while they hunker down and ride out the recession. Cities with a disproportionate reliance on tourism and conventions suffered the biggest job losses.
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The USTA claims that locations like Orlando and Las Vegas, with thousands of hotel rooms and millions of square feet of conference space, are not only better-equipped to handle large groups, but can offer great deals.
In an effort to claw back government business, Mayor Richard Crotty of Florida's Orange County recently sent letters to 1,800 government meeting planners touting the virtues of
the Orlando area. He emphasized the abundance of hotel rooms, the convention facilities and the low airfares in an effort to make it clear that Orlando is a value destination.
Even the White House has criticized the unwritten policy, despite the fact that President Obama himself singled out Las Vegas in comments he made about lavish spending by companies that had taken bailout money.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in a letter to Senator Harry Reid that a ban on locations takes the wrong approach to the issue. "Federal policy should not dictate the location where such government events are held," he said. "Our view on the issue of government travel is not focused on specific destinations, but rather on the justification for and the cost/benefit ratio of the individual exercise."
Reid, who represents the tourism-dependent state of Nevada, said that he hopes Emanuel's letter will send a signal to government agencies that it's OK to travel to popular resort locations.
By Karen Elowitt for PeterGreenberg.com.
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