What to Put in a TDY Trip Request So You Get Usable COAs

A trip request is not a message that says “need lodging in Vegas.” That produces guesses. A complete request produces courses of action a planner can take to leadership.

9 Line Agency builds residential lodging plans from the information you send. The quality of the COAs matches the quality of the intake. Missing dates, a vague headcount, or silence on budget forces us to assume. Assumptions waste a week and come back as properties that do not fit.

This guide is the checklist. Use it before you hit submit.

What a COA is supposed to be

A course of action is a real option, not a pretty listing.

A usable COA tells the planner:

Where the team would live
How many bedrooms are real
How close the properties sit to each other and to the gate
What it costs against per diem or the unit budget
Who would share, if anyone
Where the gathering or cadre house sits
What happens if dates or headcount flex

If the request does not include enough detail, every one of those lines becomes a guess. Guessing is how units get a five-bedroom house that sleeps five on paper and three in real life.

The minimum fields

Start here. If these are blank, stop and fill them in.

Location. City, installation, range, or schoolhouse. “Near Nellis” is better than “Nevada.” “Within 15 minutes of the south gate” is better than “near Nellis.”

Dates. Check-in and check-out, plus whether those dates are firm. If the weather window can slide a week, say so in the same line.

Headcount. Number of travelers tonight, not the number you hope to send if extra funding appears. If the roster may grow or shrink, give the range.

On-base status. Have you checked on-base lodging. Is it full, partial, or unfit for the duration. Leadership will ask. Put the answer in the request so the house option sits next to a fact, not a rumor.

Point of contact. Who can approve a COA and who gets check-in packets. One planner. Not a group chat of six people who all think someone else is deciding.

Those five items get a first look started. They are not enough for a tailored plan.

Budget reality belongs in the first message

There are two common funding pictures. Pretending they are the same produces the wrong houses.

Picture one: Full per diem, one bedroom per traveler, highest functional standard the market can support.

Picture two: The unit can fund 25 seats and wants 35 or 40 people on the trip. Density is acceptable. Cadre still needs private rooms if possible.

Write which picture you are in. Write a savings target if you have one. “Need to come in around 70 percent of hotel cost” is usable. “Make it cheap” is not.

If you do not say this up front, we will default toward one bedroom per person and a mission-capable house. That is the right default. It is the wrong COA for a density mission.

Configuration details that change the search

Bedroom count is not the only layout question.

Tell us:

Must every traveler have a private bedroom
Which roles cannot share (cadre, evaluators, females on a mixed team, senior leadership)
Whether you need a gathering house or planner house
Whether opposing force, blue force, and cadre must be in separate properties
Whether anyone needs workspace, a garage, or a fenced yard for equipment
Whether pets, weapons storage rules, or rental vans change parking needs

A Red Flag style movement and a four-person staff TDY use the same word “house” and need completely different footprints. Separate elements in the request. Do not make us discover on a call that OpFor cannot live next door to the evaluators.

Location and commute constraints

A great house 45 minutes from the gate with a brutal entry line can lose to an average house 12 minutes out.

Include:

Preferred gate
Maximum drive time
Whether people will hold rental cars or need to cluster for shared vehicles
Whether some travelers arrive at different hours and need a reception house

If five people will live together so they can share one vehicle, say that. Clustering properties within five to ten minutes of each other is a search criterion, not a nice extra.

Dates that might move

Military travel is dynamic. Put the uncertainty in writing.

Useful language:

Firm dates
Dates may slide up to seven days based on range weather or aircraft
Early departures expected in a pipeline with a known fail rate
Possible add-on element after week one

That information changes which owners and policies we use. It is also how we avoid locking you into a tourist cancellation structure that punishes official travel.

If you already know students wash out of the course, say the historical rate. We can plan houses and refund timing around that instead of pretending all 40 people will stay 14 nights.

What not to send as the whole request

A link to a consumer listing is not a trip request. A screenshot of a hotel rate is useful context. It is not a substitute for headcount and dates.

Do not send only “something nice.” Nice is not a requirement. Mission-capable is a requirement. Nice can be a preference after the bedrooms, commute, and budget are real.

Do not send a roster with PII you do not need to share yet. We do not need full SSNs and full social profiles to source properties. We need numbers, roles, and constraints. Names and bedroom assignments come when the COA is chosen.

What you should get back

A complete request should produce more than one path.

Typical return:

COA 1: one bedroom per person, clustered houses, cadre gathering property
COA 2: tighter budget, some sharing, same cluster logic
COA 3: hotel or hybrid if that is actually better in that market

Each COA should show cost, bedroom math, map logic, and trade-offs. Then the planner can brief leadership without inventing the comparison.

If we only send one listing, we have done the same thing a consumer site does. That is not the product.

How long this takes on your side

Ten minutes with this checklist is faster than three email rounds of “how many people” and “are dates firm.”

Write the block once. Reuse it for the next trip. Change the dates and the location. Keep the configuration language if the unit travels the same way every time.

Units that send complete requests get COAs they can approve. Units that send fragments get questions, then delay, then leftover inventory.

A simple template you can copy

Location:

Installation or training site:

Preferred max drive time:

Dates (firm or flex):

Headcount (min / expected / max):

On-base lodging status:

Budget picture (full per diem vs density / savings target):

One bedroom per person: yes / no / cadre only

Elements that must be separated:

Gathering or cadre house needed:

Equipment, garage, or yard needs:

Rental cars / shared vehicles:

Known washout or early departure risk:

Planner POC:

Paste that into the trip request. Add anything unique. That is enough to start real work.

Why this page exists

Residential TDY fails in two places. Bad properties. Bad intake.

9 Line Agency can vet houses, assign bedrooms, write check-in packets, and absorb appropriate date-change risk. We cannot invent a requirement you did not state. The trip request is the requirement document.

If you want usable COAs for the next movement, send the full picture the first time. Location, dates, people, money, and what must not happen. We will come back with options a planner can actually brief.