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"My last 5-day cross-country business trip cost $1100 and I stayed at a pretty decent hotel."

Sorry, but I don't believe it. We're talking conference travel here, not a business trip. I'm on the speaker's circuit and travel to up to 12 conferences a year, plus incidental personal travel. Some conferences charge as much as $900 for registration fees. The cheapest conference I went to last year charged $300. There was one occasion with back to back conferences over 6 day period and the registration alone was $1450. It isn't cheap to rent out a conference center. For a national or international meeting the cost can easily go over a quarter million.

I also didn't realize before that the travel cost of $7000 was for 4 people, not just one. That makes the price pretty reasonable. $1750 for a 5-day conference isn't bad. It's not smart to schedule something like this in Hawaii, though. The public is going to be crying abuse no matter how good the prices are. Like the article says, if this had been scheduled in St. Louis, nobody would have given it a 2nd look.

And yes, my last business trip was $1100 and some change. But I was looking at aircraft parts and machining processes, not attending a conference. And the flight between Salt Lake and Cleveland was only about $380, which is pretty low. Most of the 3- or 4-day trips I take are right around $900-$1000, so maybe my company just has a really good contract with the airline. And I'm usually looking at facilties, aircraft parts, and machining processes so there's no conference fees or costs like that.