Ready steady cook! in your serviced apartment

Hotel Menu fatigue

We all enjoy the novelty of a holiday or a weekend break, but when the reason for travelling is work-related, the unsettled context surrounding what you will eat and where you want to eat it can become a real issue which affects how you feel about your trip.

After you have tried your favourite items on the Hotel or Take-away menus, menu-fatigue can set in and really affect the equilibrium of your lifestyle.

So food, kitchens and cooking are a recurring theme when it comes to short-lets, serviced apartments and Residences. One of the main reasons assignees say they prefer an SA is because they just want to be able to take a break from the “always-on” Hotel lifestyle.

Diet and Lifestyle

It’s a cliché to talk about a home from home, but the fact is it’s a very human and stabilising thing to base your approach to everyday life on a lifestyle-routine that works for you. The main ingredients of this “Dish of the Day” are your time, your work, your leisure and your food.

People who follow special diets can find this presented an extra challenge in times past, but now with the autonomy of a serviced apartment, with its enviable kitchen facilities, whatever your dietary needs, you can fit right in to your new neighbourhood.

You can make the apartment “your own” by re-creating your usual breakfast routine (with pillow-hair dressing-gown and odd socks – but no-one can see you), snacks that room-service just would not “get”, and most of all, your favourite evening meal, the way that only you can do it.

Getting the best flavours out of the ingredients

Of all the cooking programmes on TV, Ready, Steady Cook! is a firm favourite, because of the sheer acute creativity and problem-solving that goes on, against the clock. Which team will win? The Green Peppers or the Red Tomatoes?

Planning a successful stay using SA’s as a hotel alternative echoes the format for Ready Steady Cook, because it takes skill and flair to get the best out of the sometimes pre-selected “ingredients”. The right availability, may not be in the right location, or with the right facilities, or at the right price.

Because of the need to combine all of these factors carefully to make a combination which is palatable and to the taste of the Assignee, this is a creative and practical task for a skilled person.

Knowing the best ingredients, plus good preparation, timing and negotiating (the seasoning) pays dividends – and can overcome your Assignee’s menu-fatigue!!

Buzzphrase generator

What is Short-Term Corporate Housing?
What is a Serviced Apartment?
Buzz phrase Generator…
If you are travelling to
a new city and
staying for an extended period of time, you will soon discover the enormous
cost of staying in a hotel, not to mention all the costs of eating out.
Fortunately, there are accommodation options available that provide the essential
benefits of a hotel without its excessive costs.

Whether your stay is
business or personal, short-term housing may be the solution to reducing costs.
One type of rental accommodation that is growing in popularity is Short-Term
Corporate Housing, also known as the Serviced Apartment.

Short-Term Corporate
Housing refers to furnished apartments that are available to anyone who
requires housing for more than four days, right up to an extended period of
time.
Guests can include
business travellers, contract-workers, people relocating to a new city, and more. Corporate housing
providers generally offer such features as fully furnished units, a fully
functional kitchen with modern appliances that also includes pots and pans,
linens, and all of the utilities.

Depending on what type of
accommodation you choose, short-term corporate housing can contain the
following amenities: washer/dryer, laundry service, valet service, fitness
centre, parking, private mailbox, free local telephone, high-speed internet
access, housekeeping services, grocery shopping service, and urban and suburban
locations. As well, there are corporate accommodations suited for families.
This can include providing the necessary items for babies.

Depending on your needs,
the layout of short-term corporate housing accommodations is both big and
roomy. As well, they can include multiple bedrooms, more than one bathroom, and
a separate dining and living room. Comfort, convenience, and luxury are key
features of short-term corporate housing. There is also ample room to entertain
guests and business associates. Business guests can even use the apartment for
meetings, or set up their own mini office.
Corporate apartments are
much larger than regular and extended stay hotel rooms, and provide a home-like
atmosphere. The minimum stay at a short term corporate housing accommodation
will vary by property operator, but stays can be as little as a few days, or
thirty days or more.
Staying in a traditional
hotel for more than a few days can end up being a very expensive prospect.
Whether you are travelling to an area for business or a personal purpose, if
you are going to be staying for a period of time that could result in a high
hotel expense, you may want to consider short-term corporate housing
After a hectic and tiring
day at work or other activity, guests can return to housing that is
comfortable, easy-to-settle in, and much like a home away from home environment,
instead of a tiny and limited hotel room. If you are planning on an extended
stay trip, short-term corporate housing may be the solution. The convenience,
reasonable rates, and luxurious accommodation that is associated with corporate
housing will make your time away from home much more comfortable.

Response to Sam Gilliland on ABTN 24 August 2009

Sam Gilliland of Sabre argues in ABTN that the Travel Industry is unfairly targeted as a focus of CO2 emissions, and there are other ways to reach environmental goals:

Adrian England, builds on those ideas, suggesting that by planning itineraries and more use of serviced apartments we can face our obligation to choose when to travel…and how to spend our time.

CO2 - Planes (2%) and Cattle (18%)

Sam Gilliland, of Sabre, makes the point that flying is unfairly targeted as a polluter. 

I imagine the livestock industry, producing 9 times more CO2 emissions (in the form of Methane), is under environmentalist pressure to deal with its own “emissions” issue. Obviously, a “1 in 5” challenge for them could be achieved by all of us deciding to eat 20% less beef. Of course that simply will not happen.

Just as we all have to eat, we all need to trade, and trade has always meant travelling to market. Some small reductions in Travel-Carbon will certainly come from some people “going Techno-vegetarian”, and some more sustainable reductions from people cutting down sensibly – the equivalent of eating less red meat and taking more exercise.

Before arable farming was established there was no option but to hunt Game and live a Nomadic lifestyle. Before the Telephone people wrote more letters. Before SMS and IM people just sent short emails. Before Websites everybody used actual shops, all the time.

The point we face is that it is now possible for us to trade successfully without flying so much.

Invention and Exploration has brought us expanded choice – it has also brought us choices.

I agree with Sam Gilliland, meeting our trading partners face to face is often essential. The value of human interaction should not be under-estimated any longer. We humans have five senses, not two;

BUT … time is an important factor here. So if we use our time effectively we can do more, to “virtually” be in two places at once. Even when we choose to actually travel for the valid purpose of human interaction, we can choose to use our time more effectively.

Now many essential face-to-face meetings can be planned around conferences or other “in-person” events, rolling several flights into one – call it the healthy-travelling option. By planning to stay longer and tackle a full agenda, the use of Carbon, and the Time, is fully-justified and therefore comparatively more efficient.

The serviced apartment option gives a traveller back their time. Instead of eating Menu-portions each day, our traveller can fix a snack and be free to use the evening productively either relaxing properly in preparation for the next day, or perhaps using skype on their laptop (to be “kind-of” in two places at once. This is because now a business-person can make their “home” lifestyle “portable”, using their serviced apartment’s facilities.

Precocious genius, or problem-child?

1000 word Article on the State of the Serviced Apartments Market

Title:

Serviced Apartments: “Precocious Genius” or “problem-child”?

Dealing with the “New Arrival”

How can we gain a sense of where the Serviced Apartments sector is right now, within the Business Travel Accommodation and Hospitality Industry?

Everyone knows that the “Family” is model which has proven potential to adapt successfully. Families take many forms these days. In families there is always subtle change, because members are growing, personalities are emerging, and elder siblings are adapting to the younger generation as they take on their own identities.

If the family is to thrive, it needs to have a valued role in the wider community. We all know of notorious families who are always feuding, and we know of positive examples where each member feels valued and there is interplay between the generations, which lifts the reputation and standing of the whole family.

The accommodation industry has such a new member of its family. The Character of the relative New Arrival, known as “Serviced Apartment”, or “SA” (as well as many other terms of endearment), is still being formed.

Even if some of the family can be more difficult to deal with – is this a Bad Thing?

A bland family cannot involve itself in the community, in the way that a characterful family naturally puts in as much as it gets out. We all know members of our own families who reward good preparation and a flexible approach, yet we would not do without them.

Are SAs experiencing inconvenient growing pains, as a maturing family member which won’t conform? (Children should be seen – on GDS - and not heard) Or do they enrich the whole household, contributing ideas and justifying their place, making the other family members richer by their unique attributes?

Like all new arrivals, some people experience them and catch on earlier.

Assignees have figured this out, and the message has reached their Travel Managers: People live in their Business Travel Accommodation. It’s Autonomy – not Astronomy! (or Rocket Science) The accommodation should enable the people to be productive – whether this is short or long-term.

Now, how can the New Arrival become a full, well-adjusted part of the industry?

We can see how each organisation which has a travel policy has in effect, it’s own “family – squabbles” to get through, in relation to Serviced Apartments.

Familiarity and COMMUNICATION lead to acceptance and mentoring, and then the “family” of accommodation types can achieve more, with each member focusing on it’s natural contemporaries (Business Travellers). After all, the alternative to Business Travel is …videoconferencing!!

OK, you say, but staying in a serviced apartment is the easy part. Booking them seems to present a challenge to the un-initiated. Clearly, in order to achieve the benefits from the New Arrival, there are some “behaviour issues” to work through:

Real-time Access to crucial (useful) availability – is it possible?

Flexibility combined with Autonomy – this is the recipe which combines the key ingredients of serviced apartments. But delivering this delicacy is a challenge faced daily by reservations staff. Genius is 1% inspiration, but 99% perspiration…

It’s an acknowledged convention of the whole accommodation industry that availability has to be managed actively, to maximise occupancy, in order to make buildings viable and sustainable as businesses.

Serviced apartment inventory and availability has sprung from businesses based in either Hotels, Conventional Lettings, or Property Development.

Inventory is much more fragmented than the equivalent for hotels, and apartment occupancy percentages also have to be allocated in larger parcels. This is because hotels tend to be bigger than serviced apartment buildings.

What’s different about availability in Serviced Apartment buildings?

The Reservations manager is working strategically with a “distressed inventory” in dynamic profile of ‘gaps’, formed by remaining availability. However, unless later bookings or requirements are 100% reliable and perfectly fit the gaps, buildings will soon be looking “marginal” or nervous on occupancy, even two weeks prior to any given date. This, most crucial of all availability cannot be (and is not) surrendered to the GDS!!

Comparing the alternatives:

Whereas an hotel may have 100 identical rooms, giving 2,800 room-nights in 28 nights, the average serviced apartment building may have 10 comparable apartments, giving just 280 room-nights in the same period, for example.

A typical booking for an hotel may be as long as four nights, which in the above example is a mere 0.14% of that hotel’s total occupancy for the 28 nights the reservation manager has to sell.

In comparison, a typical booking for a serviced apartment may be 14 nights, which is 5% of that serviced apartment building’s total occupancy.

So …the typical serviced apartment booking is more than 30 times a “bigger deal” than the hotel reservation. This is why booking serviced apartments requires the additional dimension of customer care provided by the reservations staff and management, over that required for a hotel booking to be made online.

In hotels, where the overwhelming bulk of stays are very short indeed, there is a high percentage "churn" each day, accepted as a fact of life, because the business-world is geared to need this flexibility. There is also therefore, a high likelihood of last-minute arrivals. This makes it much easier to react to cancellations and late bookings.

Serviced apartment reservations managers will "juggle" bookings several times before arrival, in order to maximise occupancy, they will also have to apply a realistic cancellation policy, to mitigate potential risk of losses, because serviced apartment buildings cannot simply wait for the perfect guests to “walk-in” at the last minute, and then stay for 14 nights or more!!.

What can I do to take advantage of Serviced Apartments and obtain their value?

The better the lead-time, the better the result will be.

It’s better to start REALLY EARLY, with a sensible - but postpone-able, set of dates.

Then, with good communications (and, crucially, well-established relationships) the best path can be found to balance commitment with flexibility.

 

The Scale of Key stakeholders and their perceptions of Serviced Apartments:

Delighted Assignees who can live the way they want to - Home from home, leave me alone. You can snack, you can do your laundry for next to nothing, you can even have visitors over.

Happy CSR Director - sees a better balance between business travel & carbon emissions.

Contented Financial Director who sees an Austerity Sales pitch on rates - More space for less cost, but ALSO savings on Food & Beverages - Assignees buy food cost-effectively

Approving HR Director – sees key staff more willing to travel to a Home from home,

…. And a Stressed Travel Arranger (TMC/Relo/Travel Manager/Procurement) because they still have zero reaction time and feel insecure because they can’t book online!!

A good Serviced Apartments Agency therefore needs to act like a Family Therapist, enabling the organisation to find a place in the Family, for the “New Arrival”.

Fit for purpose?

Three Approaches to Longer-distance Business Relationship-building:

Business travel is often viewed as an “exercise” in “pressing the flesh”, but perhaps it should be seen as a “fitness programme” for building relationships.

If you want to get physically fit, experts say you have to both exercise and eat properly. Similarly, in business, if you want to have productive relationships, they need to be “exercised” properly, or their health will suffer …and of course, this can also involve eating – sensibly or not!

Take a moment to ask yourself: when you aim to stay fit, combining exercise for Cardio-vascular, strength, and suppleness, which approach works?

Do you:

a) go crazy when you can find the time, and take a sprint on the treadmill at 5 minutes’ notice, then collapse, exhausted, until the next time?

b) never leave home, watch sport on TV or perhaps do a so-called ‘work-out’ on the Wii Fit?

or

c) find a good Gym, and with help of a Personal Trainer, plan a personalised training programme, using the correct equipment for you?

Thinking again about your approach to Business-Travel, would you choose to commit yourself to a crazy, intensive schedule every so often, that will simply exhaust you? Or plan to invest your time in a sustainable routine that will result in sustainable, long-term benefits without causing injury?

And would you combine your chosen (travel) activity with lots of rich food, or stick to a healthy-eating plan?

We all know what would work best… so let’s apply what we’ve understood.

Here, we analyse and compare the Relationship-Health benefits across three styles of Business Travel:

(Default) Option One: Single-Focus Short, Ad-hoc Business-Trip (Hotel)

• Cost-intensive, rushed, de-humanising and Carbon-laden sprint to put a face to the name and establish a bare minimum relationship – to be able to say “I’ve met him/her”.
• Better than “No Contact”.
• Does at least allow all five senses to be exercised, not just Vision and Hearing.
• Limited scope for deepening relationships, combined with adverse effect on home relationships, if done excessively.

Possession & Genius

It’s said that Possession is nine-tenths

...and Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration

Rather like the duck gliding serenely on the water, yet in reality paddling furiously under the surface, it takes a lot of effort to deliver smooth convenience and flexibility that is expected by the Business Traveller, especially the person staying more than a few days, which means the majority of relocating individuals and families. Flexibility is a great benefit of serviced apartments, but it is also the great challenge faced daily by Reservations Staff.

It’s an acknowledged convention of the accommodation industry, that availability has to be managed actively, to maximise occupancy, in order to keep buildings viable. Serviced Apartment inventory and availability is much more fragmented than the equivalent for Hotels, and apartment occupancy has to be allocated in larger parcels. This is because Hotels tend to be bigger than Serviced Apartment Buildings.

Why is that so?

For example, whereas an Hotel may have 100 identical rooms, giving 2800 room-nights in 28 nights, the average Serviced Apartment Building may have 10 comparable apartments, giving 280 room-nights in the same period.

Let’s briefly look at the numbers:

A typical booking for an Hotel may be as long as 4 nights, which in the above example is a mere 0.14% of that hotel’s total occupancy for the 28 nights' the Reservation Manager has to sell.

In comparison, a typical booking for a Serviced Apartment may be 14 nights, which is 5% of that serviced apartment building’s total occupancy.

So …the Serviced Apartment booking is over 30 times a bigger deal than the Hotel reservation. This is why booking serviced apartments requires an additional dimension of care by the Reservations Staff and Management, over that required for a Hotel.

Added to this is the commercial imperative (mentioned above) to achieve cost-efficiency from high levels of occupancy:

What’s different about availability in Serviced Apartments buildings?

When a Reservations Manager starts to make decisions about placing "strategic" bookings in position, he or she creates a dynamic profile of gaps, where there is remaining availability. These can be filled tactically.

However, unless later bookings or requirements are 100% reliable and perfectly fit the gaps, buildings will soon be looking “marginal” or nervous on occupancy, even two weeks prior to any given date.

In Hotels, where the overwhelming bulk of stays are very short indeed, there is a high percentage "churn" each day, accepted as a fact of life, because the business-world is geared to need this flexibility. There is also therefore, a high likelihood of last-minute arrivals. This makes it much easier to react to cancellations and late bookings.

Serviced Apartment Reservations Managers will "juggle" bookings several times before arrival, in order to maximise occupancy, they will also have to apply a realistic cancellation policy, to mitigate potential risk of losses, because Serviced Apartment buildings cannot simply wait for the perfect guests to “walk-in” at the last minute, and then stay for 14 nights!!.

What can I do to ease this difficulty and get better value?

The better the lead-time, the better the result will be.

A "rule of thumb" for Serviced Apartments - if you can - is to aim to book at least 14 days ahead of arrival, for a typical 14 night Reservation. For a stay of less than 7 nights it should be possible to book down to 7 days ahead of arrival.

It’s better to start REALLY EARLY, with a sensible - but postepone-able, set of dates.

Then, with good communications (and established relationships) the best path can be found to balance commitment with flexibility.

The later a traveller has visibility of their plans, inevitably much of the "first-choice" availability may have been booked, but less exact matches for the brief may be proposed as a workable “Plan B”.

With serviced apartments it’s all about People:

People need flexibility AND convenience, especially when they are “on the move” - then People can produce their best.

Some biography stuff

Profile                        Adrian England

I enjoy being in a sector which is innovating in the UK, and I am passionate about matching property with people. I hate a “one size fits all” solution, it really sucks. What we do affects individual people, that’s why we always do the best job we can, in every instance, to find out what the “people factor” is, and get a creative solution that the person will appreciate.

It’s not always easy; modern society moves fast, and sometimes you don’t get the whole picture at the start, so what we do is problem-solving, adapting,

co-operating to get the best results based on the information we have.

It’s great when you find a close-match to the brief which will save money, save time, and improve someone’s quality of life – all in one option.

There is creative value in a great option like that.

MPV

A Multi-Purpose Vehicle for Corporate Housing

1. Which vehicle would you prefer to drive on a long trip, given the choice:

A standard saloon car with a cup-holder plus a roof-rack?

….Or an MPV with folding rear seats and cruise-control?

(If going off-road, would you even consider Four-Wheel Drive?)

2. Would you think about certain things you can do to make the journey less draining for the driver?

Same question, different context: Where would you book-in for a week, given the choice:

A standard hotel-room, with tea/coffee and a mini-bar, or a serviced apartment with the facilities you enjoy at home?

OK, for an overnight stay with a packed schedule, perhaps convenience and service is even more a priority than where you are staying, but even then, choose well and you’ll be in better shape throughout your journey, or your reservation.

Your Own place, with your own space

A serviced apartment is much more than just a place to stay. It is a place to live. Unlike a hotel room where a traveller is limited for space, a serviced apartment is to have your own space to live, entertain or even have family over.

There are other considerations for some - many women business travellers are just not comfortable with eating alone in hotel restaurants, preferring to use room service. In an apartment you have the luxury of more than just one room, so it’s far more appealing to dine there, relaxed and in your own space.

Facilities mean abilities

When booking a serviced apartment you are paying a flat rate that includes amenities which most hotels do not offer or cover in their prices. These include a fully equipped kitchen, usually with washer dryer, dishwasher, cooker/ oven, microwave, fridge freezer, and more. Satellite TV or Digital Freeview and unlimited broadband are also on the list of the facilities normally included.

The Cost argument

Some surveys suggest that apartments are typically 25% less expensive than a room in an equivalent hotel. The rate is charged per apartment, not per person, which makes it even more of a cost effective solution for sharers.

And for business travellers, a large part of any expense claim regularly gets spent on things which the traveller could do – and in some ways would prefer to do – for themselves, such as making their own breakfast or a favourite quick snack.

And adding value

If you can enjoy the journey, you can be more successful in its purpose.

Adrian England,