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New federal per diem rates for work travel took effect Oct. 1, 2026, and some cities stretch them a long way. In Aurora, Colorado, 96% of hotel rates shown in Engine searches fit under the new lodging cap. In Arlington, Texas, the cap covers a 4-star hotel.<\/p>\n
Per diem is the daily amount the federal government allows<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0lodging, meals and incidental expenses on work travel. Lodging is repaid at cost up to a nightly cap, and meals and incidentals are a flat daily amount. The U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) table covers the 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., and many companies use it for their own employees.<\/p>\n Engine<\/a>, a business travel platform, analyzed every hotel rate shown in its searches<\/a>\u00a0for check-ins from October 2025 through September 2026 and compared each one with the new lodging cap for that hotel’s county and month.<\/p>\n This analysis\u00a0looks only at lodging, the nightly per diem cap for a hotel room. The standard lodging cap rose from $110 to $113 a night, and 295 destinations\u00a0have a higher cap of their own.. New York and Boston have the two highest caps of the 89 cities in the\u00a0analysis, $291 and $284 a night on average. As you\u2019d expect, both rank near the bottom in terms of\u00a0how many hotel rates fit under the cap. Across the year, 38% of rates fit in New York and 44% in Boston. Chicago, with a $202 cap, fits 38%. Dallas gets $184 and fits 72%, enough to cover 3.5-star hotels.<\/p>\n Below, find out where the new per diem rates go furthest and where they fall short.<\/p>\n Where does the lodging per diem go furthest?<\/p>\n Six of the top 10 cities share a cap with a larger neighbor. Aurora gets the same $203 cap as Denver, and 96% of Aurora\u2019s hotel rates fit under it, compared with 67% in Denver. Irving, Texas, gets Dallas\u2019s $184 cap and fits 85% of rates. A traveler who can stay a few miles out gets a better\u00a0hotel for the same per diem\u00a0amount.<\/p>\n A table listing the hotel rates under each American city’s FY2027 lodging cap and showing where the lodging per diem goes furthest. (Stacker\/Stacker)<\/p>\n EngineWhere does the lodging per diem fall shortest?<\/p>\n In Boston, 94% of 2-star rates fit under the cap, but only 53% of 3-star rates do. Chicago is similar, with 83% of 2-star rates and 51% of 3-star rates under its cap. New York has the highest cap in the country and fits 38% of its rates. \u201cNone\u201d means no hotel class fits under the cap often enough to count.<\/p>\n A table listing the hotel rates under each American city’s FY2027 lodging cap and showing where the lodging per diem goes shortest. (Stacker\/Stacker)<\/p>\n EngineWhich months does the cap fall furthest behind?<\/p>\n In 47 of the 89 cities, the typical hotel rate in at least one month was higher than that month\u2019s cap. These four cities had the widest gap.<\/p>\n Engine<\/p>\n The same cities cover most rates in the off-season. In January, Boston\u2019s cap is $213, the typical rate is $144, and 78% of rates fit under it. Chicago fits about three-quarters of its rates in November and January.<\/p>\n Why doesn\u2019t a bigger per diem buy a better hotel?<\/p>\n GSA sets each cap at 5% below the average rate at mid-range hotels<\/a>\u00a0in the area, using data from the previous April through March. Upscale and luxury hotels are left out of that average, so in a city full of them, the cap covers the cheaper end of the market.<\/p>\n The cap also changes by month in 149 destinations. New York\u2019s runs from $189 in January and February to $358 from September through December. Boston\u2019s runs from $213 to $365.<\/p>\n Is the $113 standard rate enough?<\/p>\n Fourteen of the 89 cities have no GSA rate of their own and get the $113 standard rate. In all 14, the cap covers a 2.5-star hotel at most.\u00a0Frisco, Texas, a Dallas suburb, fits only 32% of its hotel rates under $113, while Dallas itself gets $184. Jacksonville and Richmond fit about half of their hotel rates.<\/p>\n What are the options when hotel rates exceed the cap?<\/p>\n If hotel rates exceed the cap, check the month first. In New York and Boston, the cap swings by more than $150 a night across the year, so the same trip can fit under it in one month and not the next. Then check the suburbs, since a town a few miles out often shares the big city\u2019s cap with cheaper hotels. In most of the 89 cities, the cap covers 2.5-star or 3-star hotels, so that is the class to search. Federal travelers can be reimbursed for actual expenses up to 300% of the per diem rate with agency approval. Company policies vary.<\/p>\n How the analysis worked<\/p>\n Engine used GSA\u2019s FY2027 lodging rates by county and month, effective Oct.\u00a01, 2026. Counties with no named destination use the $113 standard rate. The hotel data includes every rate shown in Engine searches for check-ins from October 2025 through September 2026 from the platform\u2019s 2 million users across 40,000 businesses. Rates include fees paid at the hotel and exclude taxes, because GSA counts mandatory fees against the cap. A typical rate is the median rate shown in searches for that city and check-in month, compared with the FY2027 cap for the same month. Hotel rates are from the past year; the caps are the ones in effect now.<\/p>\n A hotel class counts as covered when at least 70% of its rates came in under the cap, and every lower class did too. \u201cNone\u201d means no class qualified. In Pittsburgh, 2-star rates fell just short at 69.9% while 2.5-star rates cleared the mark. Detroit had too few rates below 3.5\u00a0stars to judge those classes. Buffalo had too few 2-star rates, and its 2.5-star rates missed the mark.<\/p>\n The analysis started with the 100 largest U.S. cities by Census Bureau estimates. It excluded Anchorage and Honolulu, which use separate federal tables. A city includes hotels with that city in their address, so Irving and Frisco count separately from Dallas.<\/p>\n This story<\/a>\u00a0was produced by Engine<\/a>\u00a0and reviewed and distributed by Stacker<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New federal per diem rates for work travel took effect Oct. 1, 2026, and some cities stretch them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,60769],"class_list":["post-433401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-stacker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/https:\/\/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com\/cmg\/BZIBXYQEGE6C7OVYRXQ3BCNPBY.jpg\")
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