Am I allowed to stay at Kirtland Casita according to the Joint Travel Regulations (JTR)?

Yes! According to the DoD Travel Allowance Guidance (JTR, Appendix B) 09-23-21 section B0309 there are several situations that may apply, all of them allow you to stay with us. You should take the time to understand where you fall into this guidance so you can be confident that you aren’t breaking any rules.

There’s a lot to digest here so stick with me. Trust me, your time now is worth it to avoid spending months in base lodging.

The easiest and best case scenario is that you have a letter of non-availability from the Kirtland Inn. You can get this by putting your dates into DTS or calling the Kirtland Inn and being told they have no room in the inn for your dates. When this happens, you now fall under this clause: “A DoD preferred hotel” [aka. the hotels listed on DTS] “or privatized lodging” [base hotels run by a private company] “is available and the traveler stays in another hotel for personal reasons, then the traveler is responsible for paying all costs that exceed the Integrated Lodging Program Pilot lodging rate and taxes. (JTR, par. 020303).” Basically, the government will give you the local per diem rate and leave you responsible for the rest of the cost. Luckily, we charge the local per diem rate so you won’t have to pay anything out of pocket!

There are a few other requirements, but we meet those as the hosts and you don’t have to worry about them. We are compliant with the US Fire Administration Guidelines.

You should know that the government wants you to use base lodging if it's available. However, the JTR does specify “the government cannot direct the traveler to accept inadequate accommodations.” Either way, the JTR says, “if adequate Government quarters are available on the U.S. installation to which a Service member is assigned TDY, but the Service member chooses to use other lodging, then the Service member is limited to the reimbursement cost of Government quarters on the assigned TDY installation.” (JTR Table 2-14). All that means you can stay somewhere else (somewhere better) as long as the expenses don’t exceed what you would have paid if you stayed in base lodging (or you pay the difference out of pocket). We adjust our prices to match what you’re authorized, so you’ll never pay out of pocket, even if you didn’t get a letter of non-availability.

https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/Docs/AP-CFT-03.pdf

https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/lodging.cfm