Clarendon Serviced Apartments, with almost 25 years in the business, have seen dramatic changes to the extended-stay apartment market in London. For a start, the ‘high-flying’ executives are far more demanding than they used to be. The novelty of spending an extended-stay in a hotel, is simply no longer a novelty.
There are many and several causes of stress in the modern workplace. Long hours, unreasonable deadlines, stretched targets, lack of clear management, not having the correct tools for the job and even unpalatable colleagues. In fact, the list is somewhat endless, and even those who claim to enjoy their work sometimes fall foul of stress in the workplace.
One element of stress, which many otherwise interpret as being rather glamorous, is international work-related travel. While the Silicon Valley daughter proudly announces that “dad works in London”, dad if often not as enthusiastic, especially if he’s been through it all before previously in another part of the world.
Short-term, international business working has become more popular with companies, as the cost can be lower than permanent relocation. And London, as one of the world’s major cities, has, for decades, seen inward international work movement on an increasing scale.
One of the main reasons is that, to put it simply, a hotel is not a home. A hotel provides a single room – admittedly sometimes quite luxurious – but a single room nevertheless. It’s very much a sleeping place, not a living and working place. And while a hotel is fine for a long stay or holiday, as a ‘home’ base for more than a month, it quickly loses its sparkle. And when this occurs, stress can set in.
So if you have travelled thousands of miles to work away from home on an extended-stay basis, just how do you relax?
Some years ago, Clarendon Services Apartments undertook a study in consultation with well-known psychologist “Agony Aunt”, Donna Dawson, who specialises in personality and behaviour and who has guested on many television programmes and in the media over the years.
She questioned how a busy, travelling, business executive can achieve a good, healthy balance between work and life when away from home. With a relaxed home life being one of the primary antidotes to stress at work, the traveller is not only away from the familiar home environment, but also away from family and friends.
So much so, that a World Bank in America survey found that stress-related psychological problems for the partners of frequent travellers were themselves three times higher than those whose spouses stayed at home! So it’s not just the traveller who feels the pressure of being away from home.
But it’s very much a ‘needs must’ approach that is necessary, as opposed to a luxury for the main income-generator to have to spend an extended period working abroad, especially if they are employed by an international business.
So if you are on your own, away from home, how can something such as accommodation help cure the stresses of being away from home and family?
For a start, it’s vital to have your own private, quality space. Somewhere you can retire to at the end of the day, lock the door and relax.
Now, while a hotel room can provide this on a short-term basis, it is but a room, just somewhere to sleep, and not an alternative to a home. On the other hand, long term serviced apartment accommodation in London can provide all the advantages – sometimes many more – of the best hotels, with the added bonus of all the comforts of home.
Importantly, there’s space. You are not living, relaxing and working in the same room that your bed occupies. Even the most compact London serviced apartment will typically have three times the space of the average hotel bedroom, with at the very least one bedroom, a lounge, separate dining area and fully-fitted kitchen. It won’t have the structured regime of a hotel for mealtimes and costs will be far lower over the period of an extended stay than they would be in a hotel.
And hotels are completely inappropriate for families when it comes to extended stays. If the traveller is accompanied by their spouse and children, or perhaps they have dispensation to visit regularly, unless a suite of rooms are taken in a hotel, there is no correlation to a normal family life.
An extended-stay serviced apartment from Clarendon, located in one of the many leafy suburbs of London, offers space, privacy and freedom to enjoy the local facilities on an as-and-when basis, with the convenience of enjoying, what is in essence, a temporary second home, rather than four walls and a bed.
After all, if you buy a property abroad as a second home, you’re not going to purchase a hotel room!