Here’s How You Choose Where to Stay for your Business Travels
Your boss doesn’t care where you live—you have to take charge and choose where to stay. However, it can be tough to make a choice when there are so many options out there. Don’t worry: we’ll tell you how to choose!
It’s real: you’re being sent for a business trip. In a foreign country, you’re going to be away from the comfort of your home. You may have all the business travel essential items you need, but the biggest essential is still a roof over your head.
With all the options out there like serviced apartments and co-living spaces, how can you choose one that’s actually right for you? While you might know how to select a private apartment for yourself, how do you compare and understand whether that or co-living spaces suit you better?
Today, there’s a shift in the way business accommodation is booked. Rather than being purely handled by HR managers, companies are now giving you the freedom to choose where you want to live, which is especially important if you’re staying for long periods.
How do you stay productive and settle in quickly while you’re in a foreign country? Simple, you need to find the right place to stay.
As an expat employee, you want to make full use of this opportunity—you wouldn’t want to live in the ‘wrong’ place and find yourself itching to book the next flight home every waking moment, so it’s best you take a step back and understand which location really suits you. When you’ve adapted to the lifestyle, you can even pursue your interests too!
Before you rush to look at the options available to you, read on as we tell you how to choose between a serviced apartment and a co-living space.
Serviced Apartment
Quiet, private, and furnished with taste, a serviced apartment can become a calm retreat for your own. Though it may be a traditional choice, many expats still opt for a serviced apartment for the following reasons:
You Value and Want Privacy
To you, privacy is a top priority. Throughout the day, you’re thrust into action, working alongside other people and building projects in the company. At the end of the day, you just want to sit back, wind down, and start recharging for another hectic day tomorrow. If you want to work in peace, you could even set up your own ideal workspace in your home!
You Still Want To Enjoy Hotel-like Luxuries
Who said you can’t get hotel-like treatment at serviced apartments? While you work, you can expect your home to kept spick and span with housekeeping. You won’t even have to lift a finger to keep things running with maintenance all taken care of! Besides, you get to enjoy all the hotel-like amenities too: gyms, barbeque pits, and swimming pools, just to name a few. Win-win, isn’t it?
Your Stay Is A Mid-Long/Long-Term
With a longer period of stay, you want to get really comfortable and choose the right serviced apartment. After all, it’s not as straightforward as a short holiday vacation where you can stay at an Airbnb or a hotel room—the longer you stay, the more those costs will add up.
That’s going to bite.
You Might be Relocating to Singapore
Perhaps you’re considering living here, which means bringing your family along to relocate. Rather than jump right into a housing commitment, you can test the waters with a serviced apartment.
Besides single rooms and studio apartments, there are serviced apartments that feature more than one bedroom for you and your family to live in. When everyone gets used to the lifestyle here—and when you eventually get your budget right—you can start finding other places around the area to make it a permanent home.
Co-Living Spaces
Imagine waking up and making breakfast with a complete stranger in the kitchen. That’s what modern communal living is like at co-living spaces. Energetic with a balance of private and communal living, co-living spaces are gradually becoming popular amongst millennials—although that’s increasingly not the case anymore.
Regardless of whether you’re a millennial or a boomer, here’s why you might choose a co-living space:
You Love Socializing and Having a Community
When you’re eating dinner, you’re joined by other like-minded individuals. When you want to work, you’re working alongside others. At the end of the day, you can lie on the beanbag, chatting with someone living a few rooms away from yours. After the conversation, you can head back to your private room in the co-living space easy.
If the culture of community-living is your thing, co-living is for you. Your “neighbors”, who are tenants in the other rooms, form this giant social network within the co-living space. You get to seek social and environmental support from one another.
What if you’re an introvert? Here’s the thing: co-living and introverts work!
You Like to Work Together With Others
In a community, everyone helps one another. When you’re living together with others, you also share a role in keeping the place clean and neat. As you wipe tabletops, wash dishes and vacuum the carpets, you can get to chat with the many roommates—soon, friends—that are living with you!
However, you’re not going to be cleaning every time. In fact, there are some co-living spaces that actually have housekeepers coming in weekly to do it for you! Sounds neat, doesn’t it? There are even community managers to help ensure everything’s in order. Talk about convenience.
Despite so, you still have to play your part. After all, you’re part of the community! Keep a lookout for co-living no-nos that you definitely don’t want to do.
You Like Having Activity
Co-living spaces are often bustling with activity. Especially when there are co-working spaces connected to it, you’re going to be spoilt for choice for things you can participate in!
You can even break away from your work from time to time with amazing community-organized events—even organizing your own with your communal friends. With the right mindset and approach, you can get adjusted to the community really quickly. Go the extra mile from time to time: you’ll really make the best of your co-living experience!
Regardless of where you stay, it’s always important to keep in mind your criteria when staying abroad: you wouldn’t want to live in an Ikea showroom and yet take you a few hundred miles to get to work. Public transport and accessibility should always be a top priority, unless you’re getting a sweet ride from the company.
Apart from that, you’ll also want to ensure everything you need is included. Think about how infuriating it will be to arrive at your new home, ready to work, only to realize that there’s no Wi-Fi (for a whole list, you can check out something we wrote so you know what to avoid)!
It’s definitely exciting to choose your own home away from home: after all, if you leave it to HR, they’ll most likely throw something less than ideal your way. Why would you want to work so hard and come back to something unsatisfactory?
Hence, you’re much better off finding trusted travel accommodation companies who actually deliver on their promises. Better yet, do your own research before you sign anything! That way, when you finally arrive at your place, you’ll be in for a truly pleasant surprise.
