The right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing

Serviced Apartments are different from Hotels, and as the French say “Vive la difference!”

SA’s are fundamentally a hotel alternative for the consumer, or their corporate booker. Hotels are the main market and will always be so. Most business travel is very short-stay and minimally-planned, fitting the hotel-model.

Here's a theory:

If hotels are conventional logical and linear, like being right-handed, you can view Serviced Apartments as like being left-handed, quirky, adaptable and lateral.

This is somewhat awkward for the right-handed majority to accept, but if you can adapt reasonably for the practical difficulties there is a richness to be found in being ambidextrous.

Adrian England
March 2012

Finding serviced apartments availability in London

How easy is it to find Serviced Apartments availability in London?
It depends on what you are looking for.

Online booking does work for “easy options” which tick all the boxes eg: optimal lead-times (not too short and not too long!), generous budgets and suitable durations, going into well-developed and yet uncongested markets with many providers and lots of stock.

However, at the coalface that clear-cut argument in favour of technology is severely-blunted by commercial and "people" realities:

Human created problems cannot be unpicked by online booking systems – these systems simply ignore or avoid them, going for the percentages and leaving a deficit for the customer and/or supplier, unless there is a clearing-house operating in tandem. This difficulty constantly feeds back into the market by pre-loading restrictions to online availability.

Business travel, in fact any travel seldom offers round pegs for round holes, hence the need for either a tolerance of inefficient occupancy or customer inconvenience, around extension or cancellation (which comes with a cost to providers) or you need people who can communicate, negotiate and problem-solve around these situations.

So I would challenge the real usefulness of online booking with serviced apartments. It is useful but it is not a silver bullet.
To help explain what I mean, I figure there are three connected perspectives on this: Traveller, booker, provider.

For the traveller/consumer it really is all about lifestyle. They choose SA’s not because of the Management Information (ergo cost savings and productivity gains) but because they try them and like them. At best MI may point to this factor, but quite frankly their popularity will be more readily shown in Travel Management Companies’ Traveller-feedback returns.

For the corporate booker it is certainly about strategic MI in its many forms, but also about tactical practicality (getting the job done) for the busy person who has to deliver a roof over a busy someone’s important head.

Tomorrow.
         For the next 14 nights.
                      With an option to extend.

This is where online booking needs a big helping hand.

Three Bedrooms in London

Three Bedroom serviced apartments in London?

Sometimes you need more space, and two bedrooms won't do.

Serviced Apartments for the Family
Corporate Housing for the Team
Just more Space!!

But. The vast majority of serviced apartments in London have just one or two bedrooms - or are studios.

Help is at hand. Here:

Three and Four Bedroom serviced apartments in London:

The Collingham SW5
Prince of Wales Terrace
Crawford Street W1
Greengarden House W1
Monarch House W8
Metropolitan W1
Sanctum NW6
and more.

I can recommend these buildings (see biog).

Great to have your suggestions and comments, if you've stayed in any of these yourself.

kind regards

Adrian England