The United States General Services Administration has announced the new fiscal year 2025 per diem rates for government travel in the continental United States. Each year, the GSA sets per diem rates for federal agencies to reimburse their employees’ lodging and meals expenses for official travel within the continental U.S. Federal per diem rates consist of a maximum lodging allowance component and a component for meals and incidental expenses. Since 2005, the GSA has calculated per diems based on the average daily rate for lodging and meals from a trailing 12-month period, minus five percent.
Effective Oct. 1, the standard continental United States lodging rate will increase from $107 to $110. The meals and incidental expenses rate tiers were revised for FY 2025; these were last revised in FY 2022. The standard M&IE rate will increase from $59 to $68, and the M&IE rate tiers for non-standard areas will increase from $59-$79 to $68-$92.
For Fiscal Year 2025, there are 296 non-standard areas that have per diem rates higher than the standard rate, down from 302 last year. The following locations that were non-standard areas (or part of an established NSA) in FY 2024 moved into the standard CONUS-rate category for FY 2025:
- Ft. Wayne, Ind. (Allen County)
- Canton, Ohio (Stark County)
- Mentor, Ohio (Lake County)
- East Greenwich/Warwick, R.I. (Kent County)
- Waco, Texas (McLennan County)
- Wisconsin Dells, Wis. (Columbia County)
The American Hotel & Lodging Association works with the GSA to make sure that these rates are fair both to hoteliers and the agencies. In March, Kevin Carey, interim president & CEO of the AHLA, committed to pushing for a per diem increase in FY 2025 to “reflect the realities of persistent inflation.” In a statement, Carey estimated that the increase to the lodging rate could be worth approximately $100 million to the hotel industry.
“These increases are an important victory for AHLA, which has made fair per diem rates a perennial federal advocacy priority on behalf of our members,” Carey said in the statement. “Government travel is a vital source of revenue for hotels, and it’s critically important that the federal government’s per diem rates take into account the economic realities hotels are facing, including the lingering effects of inflation and the nationwide workforce shortage.”