Corporate demand for serviced apartments
After coming into its own during the pandemic and its aftermath,
corporate demand for serviced apartments has levelled off last year, according to
the Global Serviced Apartment Industry Report (GSAIR) 2024.
The number of corporates booking serviced apartments for business travel has dropped 11.2 per cent year-on-year, according to the report, while usage of this accommodation type for relocation is also down year-on-year, with 56 per cent of corporates booking apartments for this purpose, compared to 74 per cent in 2023. However, the number of bookings for assignment or project work has increased slightly to 63 per cent, up from 58 per cent in 2023.
According to the report, which is based on a survey of some 3,000 corporates, serviced apartment operators and booking agents, the competitive advantage enjoyed by serviced apartments post-pandemic has been “eroded by hotels” that are expanding their own extended stay brands and, importantly, come with built-in GDS connectivity.
“People were accepting of a more complex booking process (in the aftermath of the pandemic) because there were so many different factors to consider,” says Danny Cockton, vice president, global travel services at engineering and consulting firm Wood PLC.
“As we’ve come out of that, people want to revert back to what we were all striving to achieve pre-pandemic, which is a simple, single point for all content that is really easy to pay for and really easy to reconcile,” he explains.
Based in Aberdeen, Cockton oversees Wood’s global travel programme of 36,000 travellers – 6,000 of whom are ‘active’ travellers – where the average length of a trip is 3.3 nights. But, given the project-based nature of the business, longer-term assignments are also part of the mix. Nevertheless, Cockton says his programme features more aparthotels rather than traditional serviced apartments because the latter “isn’t readily available at the point of sale”.
“At Wood, what we ask our suppliers – and our TMC in particular – is to give us the same content offline as they would online and make it just as simple to book. And it’s not just about the booking, it’s payment as well. Payment has to be as simple as the booking and I think sometimes we overlook that factor,” says Cockton.
