I am not worried about that, because we can talk about it and it is under our control. But I am afraid of the lack of response from the travel agency and organizers about our intentions to book rooms in a hotel.

The meaning of my first question was just from my observation that max – min is under 4% of the total max. In other words, on average people are stating that they are prepared to pay for 4% of their total costs out of their pocket. That seems very low – I would expect people to cover around 20% – for the reason you point out, we have $30,000 travel budget for 60 people who want it.

If I were you, I would offer people a daily subvention for accommodation, based on the cost of the cheapest available option, and offer a portion of flight costs, to allow you to cover costs for as many people as possible.

If, among the people you offer this to, some say no, you will be able to go back to others who accepted the offer and let them know that they will be getting a little more of their costs covered.

Cheers,
Dave.

As everybody would like to stay in the main hotel, which costs €96 a day (a double room), the lodging costs would be around $500 (8 nights) each. But, you should not forget the costs of each ticket. I expect to get the lodging costs near to $240 each (8 nights).

With respect to the step 1, that is suppossed to be the amount stated in the form. However, the way of dealing with values is getting the airfare costs by ourselves and ask for the difference.

It means more work for the committee, but this is the only way I see we could get better prices and being able to sponsor more people. Moreover, when the data came in the form of a document, not in a database.