As an employer sending your team on a business trip or to an extended training seminar in another city, one of the first things you or your HR manager will need to arrange is extended stay housing.
Essentially, you have two main corporate housing options for your team: a hotel room or a furnished apartment.
Both options provide the basic essentials of lodging—a roof over your head and a clean bed to sleep in, but that’s about where the similarities end. If you asked your employees whether they prefer a furnished apartment or a hotel room, you may get different answers. However if you actually put them in a furnished apartment, and then later asked them what they thought, here’s a few things they might say…
They had more than enough space.
If there’s one thing that sets a furnished rental apart from a hotel room, it’s the sheer amount of square footage available. You have the luxury of different rooms in one unit, which allows you to spread out and also keeps you from getting stir crazy when you would otherwise be staring at a hotel’s same four walls for an entire evening.
When leasing a furnished apartment, you also get to take advantage of all of the apartment community’s amenities. That almost always includes a swimming pool, a fitness center, and a community area where you can meet people or just relax outside your apartment.
They never paid for parking.
It never fails. When you travel to a new city for any type of training event or conference, you end up spending more on parking than you anticipated. Many hotels, especially if they’re in a downtown area, don’t provide complimentary parking. Apartments, however, include parking in rent, so you’re not racking up parking fees day after day.
Next time you send your corporate team on a business trip and put them up in a furnished apartment, you can count on the fact that they’ll love the ease of parking. And from a business standpoint, your company will appreciate not having to reimburse them for overpriced parking fees.
They brought their pet along.
You may not have expected your employees to take their pet with them on their business trip—if you even knew they had a pet to begin with—but can you blame them? What pet owner wants to leave their most loyal companion behind for a month or more at a time? Pet sitters are not cheap, and if you’re a pet parent, you know that they bring a little more life to your day-to-day.
In a pet-friendly furnished apartment, your employee won’t spend their time worrying about their pet back home. This is important for you as an employer, because if they’re not distracted about what’s going on at home, then their overall performance will be improved, and they will be able to work more effectively.
They tried a new recipe.
You never know how a fully furnished kitchen might inspire a person. Of course, in a furnished apartment, the kitchen is also outfitted with all of the necessities you need to make a meal or even entertain guests.
Just think, if your employee turns out to be a talented chef or baker after experimenting in their furnished apartment, you and the rest of your team may reap the benefits when they return to the office.
They’d be happy to go back.
Too many business trips begin with employees counting down the minutes until their return flight home. This should not be. While business trips and training events may not always be exciting, they should not be miserable—and they don’t have to be.
Based on the corporate guests we’ve provided furnished apartments for, it’s obvious that they prefer a spacious furnished rental to a standard hotel room. At least a furnished apartment feels like a home away from home, while a hotel just feels like you’re traveling.
The point is, by putting your employees in a furnished apartment instead of a hotel, they’ll be much more enthusiastic about their next business trip. Contact us today about leasing a furnished apartment for your corporate team!
