Work paying for hotel - would you do this?

[stagione]

Work are paying for my hotel when I attend a conference. It’s on a Thursday night and then I am taking annual leave for the Friday so that I can explore the town the conference is in.

Our budget is £300 a night. About 10 miles from the conference town is a gorgeous 5* hotel. It’s £600 a night.

Would it be unacceptable to book this hotel and pay the £300 difference? I’ve done this in the past but it’s been £40 here or there and always when the hotel is in the town where the conference is.

I could do the conference and dinner and then pay for my own cab over to the hotel.

Call the expensive hotel and ask them if they will split the invoice

That's really bad advice at every company I've ever worked at. The limit should never be seen as a target.

You need to check with the £600 hotel whether they can create an invoice for £300 that you can expense. You should then ask your accounts department at work whether it is OK to do this.

Agreed this would definitely get you noted as lacking in "business first mindset" at my work. Depending on your job/ ambition/ whatever, you may quite reasonably not give a shit though!

I've quite often stayed somewhere else with my husband and child and then stayed on when a conference somewhere nice coincided with school holidays. I always use the place everyone else is staying as the benchmark for the amount to expense though never the maximum.

I would say that was fraud.

Only your employer can answer this as it’s individual company policy.

Why? No one is being dishonest. Splitting invoices is quite common.

Yeah I just reread and realised the £300/£600 is the cost per night! I think I assumed it was for at least two nights. Whether I travel for work or leisure I just don’t stay at hotels this price.

No I’m thinking that too!

I travel to London for work and also socialising, and even if I stay in say a decent 4 star hotel I can get it much cheaper than £300 a night. The £600 one must be super luxury but personally I’d feel as if I was getting ripped off 😂 each to their own though.

But I do feel hotels have gone up post pandemic.

ETA: I just filtered my search to 5 stars in hotel in London during February and those hotels were way less than £600 a night and in some cases even less than £300 too.

I'm the finance manager for my organisation. It's definitely doable, but please check your travel policy wording in your employee handbook. I say this because our policy states we have a limit per night, but we must find the cheapest option. So if there was nothing cheaper, they can spend up to the max. People who say accounts can't process it are talking rubbish. We can easily split the VAT and process half a cost on someone's expenses claim. I do it all the time. If you can do it, then do it!

Edit: I also worked as a hotel receptionist for a few years before becoming a finance professional. You can pay half at reception then ask for a reprint of the bill that shows the remaining £300 for work. Then settle the last £300 for your work expenses reimbursement (again, we did this a lot at the hotel I worked at)

I was working for the NHS till recently. Our budget was £100 and allowed if you would have to leave home before 6am to get to the destination.
We had to recently argue for it to be raised to £110 as it was becoming really hard to get a room for under £100. The nicest type of hotel we stayed in was Premier Inn, definitely no luxury places.

The OP is spending £300 of their own money for a night which is well above what most people would spend anyhow!

As others say, depends on your company policy. At some companies I have worked at it would be ok,

I couldn't make that work through the expenses system for my company. You can't pay half. Either I pay or they pay the invoiced amount.

The hotel I most often stay in for work is a premier inn and I never pay as little as £110 - usually a bit more that £200. Hotel prices in London have got very high.

I also did a conference in NYC recently and that was properly insane - I think I ended up paying about $400 a night for a crappy doubletree.

As many posters have said, it depends on your company. Contact HR and ask. Many companies get discounts on hotel's conference prices and won't allow you to stay somewhere else, even paying the price difference, while smaller ones may do.

None of us know your company's policies.

I've got a colleague who sees all the travelling expense limits as a target. He'll order pointless side dishes to maximise his evening meal spend etc. I mean it's within the rules but I think it makes him look like a bit of a knob.

Surely you need to ask your own finance people?
I'm going to a conference next month.
I can only go because my manager suggested my son come too (it's 1/2 term).
I will pay for his train fare, but the AirBnB accommodation I have found is just about the same price as the conference accommodation so they will pay that in full.

nb he can come because he's 15 and old enough to entertain himself during the day, but not old enough to be home alone for 4 days.

Oh and it's just over £400 total for 3 nights for a 2 bedroom apartment.

Invoicing chat aside, I need to know what the hell this hotel offers to justify a 600 quid price tag!? Do they have taps running milk and honey or something!? Insane.

Capodimonte? Citalia and a few other ‘luxury’ tour brands seemed to recommend it, so we even managed to get two of the last rooms with a sea view over the bay of Naples 💙. We opted for an apartment in Rome though as so easy to walk/bus/metro to sites and there are pizza places/bars everywhere. It’s a beautiful apartment though. We have found that mixing and matching lux and basic is ideal [and doesn’t spoil my brats too much].

Both our kids are likely to want to go inter-railing/hosteling with their mates next year (post A levels/at uni) so wanted to give them the chance to learn to navigate public transport overseas with a parent on hand so they’re more confident.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a high end hotel more than the next person, but I like to feel it’s a treat - which may be OP’s plan if she doesn’t get to go away on her own much and has kids/partner at home so wants to do something for herself. If it’s £600 a night, though, I hope it has a luxury pool and spa!

Because you’ll always find some people (wouldn’t be me!) willing to pay 😆 so they do it because they can basically.

Yes I think the NHS budget for London might be different, but my point was really that £300 is pretty high and I cannot imagine £600 a night on a hotel!

I always think two nights is the minimum needed to take advantage of a fancy hotel and make the spend worth it. If you’re arriving after the conference on Thursday night, and checked out at 10 or 11 the next morning, are you going to have time to: luxuriate in a fancy room, sit in the lovely bar, use the spa, have a swim, have a leisurely breakfast, wander the grounds?

I’m starting to wonder if OP wants to go to a fancy restaurant with rooms. So the £600 would include a multi-course meal, plus the overnight. Might be way off, but if she is then I suspect the finance dept would be really unimpressed.

You'd have to check with your accounts dept I think. At my company it's a budget of "up to" an amount so we would be expected to look for reasonable accommodation near the conference, they would say no to your request if there were closer hotels that were cheaper.