In this exercise, you'll use software at various online travel sites to obtain pricing for total travel and lodging costs for a sales conference.

The Foremost Composite Materials Company is planning a two-day sales conference for October 19-20, starting with a reception on the evening of October 18. The conference consists of all-day meetings that the entire sales force, numbering 120 sales representatives and their 16 managers, must attend. Each sales representative requires his or her own room, and the company needs two common meeting rooms, one large enough to hold the entire sales force plus a few visitors (200 total) and the other able to hold half the force. Management has set a budget of $175,000 for the representatives' room rentals. The company would like to hold the conference in either Miami or Marco Island, Florida, at a Hilton- or Marriott-owned hotel.

Use the Hilton and Marriott websites to select a hotel in whichever of these cities would enable the company to hold its sales conference within its budget and meet its sales conference requirements. Then locate flights arriving the afternoon prior to the conference. Your attendees will be coming from Los Angeles (53), San Francisco (31), Seattle (21), Chicago (18), and Pittsburgh (13). Determine costs of each airline ticket from these cities. When you are finished, create a budget for the conference. The budget will include the cost of each airline ticket, the room cost, and $70 per attendee per day for food.