In May, Brian Chesky of Airbnb summed up the travel industry well when he said, "The lines between travel, living, and working are not coming to be much in the clear."
As someone who has been in the corporate housing business for a number of years now, I would like to state that the lines have not been so clear ever since business travelers and internationally mobile companies started to access alternative lodging options.

Staying in a furnished apartment rather than a hotel gives the business traveler a homely atmosphere, particularly during prolonged stays.

Bleisure travel and alternative lodging growth.

The 2010s rise of Airbnb captured attention for introducing a new travel modality. The surge was driven by demand for alternative accommodation and also had an emphasis on "experiences.

The halo effect brought about this short-term rentals appeal that surged worldwide and allowed both legacy and newcomer companies in the market to ride the wave of that trend.

"Bleisure" is a term that has emerged to reflect the impact travel, and more specifically work travel, has seen post-pandemic. Those people who were mandated to work from home last year have been merging their "office time" with "vacation time," and as a result, they can discover and experience much more of the world while doing their work.

Bleisure does seem to have a future, with over 20% of employeesable to work remotely for three to five days in a week just as well as if they were in an office according to a recent study.

The continuous demand for varied kinds of lodging has now joined with the latest expansion of "bleisure." This coming together has unveiled opportunities for people in the travel sector to widen their offerings to draw in both leisure and business tourists, especially as optimistic feelings about travel continue to rise.
Meeting the demands of business travelers.

All major online travel agencies have put in place filters for "business travel," which allows them to easily sift through accommodations that provide office-friendly amenities like high-speed internet and a workspace.
Smaller hotel brands are also targeting specific acquisitions and marketing strategies toward business travelers, notably Sonder and Casai.

This year has seen big bucks put into travel startups which will likely lead to a ton of growth and acquisition examples that are just too many to name.

Brands like Sonder and Casai basically offer the same kind of standardization as global hotel chains provide.

When you stay at a Marriott hotel, be it in Baltimore or Berlin or even Bangkok, you can expect the same experience and quality of service. This is one reason why most business travelers prefer to stay in a single trusted chain.
Firms offering alternative lodging for the extended stay market prove that standardization can go hand in hand with offering choice and experience—the two main drivers of demand for corporate accommodations.

The major problem for leisure firms trying to break into the business world is their lack of consistency or the fact that they don’t have it.

Counting on separate owners to set their own rules for keeping up a place and its comforts leads to uneven experiences, which makes it hard to get any sort of uniformity.

When a firm decides to look after the health of its workers, it has to make sure noth͏ing is left to luck.

The hurdle to joining: faith.

Corporate executives will want to work with partners they can trust, as this will enable them to share some of the burdens involved in handling complicated matters related to compliance and safety in international travel.
Inventory also needs to be subjected to stress tests against a global benchmark. Also, the supply chain must be assessed in a manner that assures every single human being along that supply chain is someone you would be prepared to enter into business with.

When self governance is allowed for maintenance and facilities, the standards become unpredictable and variable by itself and between others, thus impossible to achieve consistency.

At any visit, professionalism in service must be maintained at all times with support and maintenance around the clock. Also, you would expect to have simple access to conflict resolution and insurance coverage for both corporate and personal policies as part of the expected standards.

We offer a network of over one million properties in 60 countries with concurrent standards of duty of care – properties whose sanitary, cleansing, and disinfecting standards comply with WHO guidelines, plus a Health and Safety score, applicable to every property location, foster trust with our clients and guests.

As COVID-19 unfolded, employee welfare including health, security, and safety became paramount, thus making employers face intense pressure to eliminate related risks. The challenge was met promptly by the corporate travel industry. Enhanced cleaning measures, reduced touchpoints, and geotracking have all been implemented rapidly to restore confidence in travel.

Partnerships have been made to provide hyper-local data to customers, enabling them to take informed, real-time decisions about security threats from COVID-19 to the safety of women. The travel industry has also adopted similar measures, but the general standard has not been as uniformly consistent.

This kind of oversight is not very likely to go down; it is more probably going to become a basic part of the new normal. Business travelers can look forward to tougher rules at every stage under their boss's grip, and these measures will likely stick around for a longer time than what is seen in the fun travel sector, as companies have to make sure their workers are okay.

This ultimately indicates that corporate travel procurement is much more complex than simply going on a holiday.
Lodging companies designed specifically for business such as ABODA and similar firms inherently include this aspect in their services; they understand the needs of Fortune 500 companies even before those needs are articulated.

It does not mean that the sector will not benefit from the great dynamism and technological growth in the leisure travel sector, which took place over the last 18 months.
Corporate travel has been continuously attempting to vie in this area. Transition into corporate travel will turn out to be the most complicated part to achieve.
About the author...
Lee Curtis is co-founder and CEO of Reside.