Why are they using AirBnb rather than hotels, is it just price or is there something hotels don’t offer?
I was initially skeptical but am a complete convert to the 3-day, 2-night minimum, stay in a house, grocery shop together and cook every meal in format. (Practical exception as needed, such as for 4/3 trips where the first evening is a late arrival and a dinner out works better.)
The number of topics that got addressed/finalized while chopping vegetables or around a fire pit in the evening is likely at least equal to what we did discussing in structured setting in the living room.
(And yes, it’s a way to make 40 hours of “work” fit into 3 days, while being cheaper than 3 days times 7 people in hotels and restaurants. They can be exhausting and if you don’t like your team in the office, it’s probably not going to get better as ersatz flat mates.)
Love my job, will go the extra mile if necessary and have had many many positive interactions and experiences with coworkers but I do not want cohabitate with any of them ever for any period of time.
Get me a fucking hotel room and ill be happy as a clam between 9am and 7pm for work stuff. Take me out for dinner and drinks if you want some informal team building. Dont torture me though by making me hang out, cook with and sleep near my coworkers for the other 10-12hrs of the day.
Away on business for a few days, would you prefer to cook healthy meals in your own kitchen and relax, or do you want yet another calorific restaurant meal?
Cooking yourself is way cheaper.
Sure, if money is not a problem, have someone else cook so you spend more time on improving the product/relaxing.
I cook 90+% of our dinners at home as it is. Getting a chance to go to a restaurant is easily the best part of business trips.
I drove from Adelaide to Sydney via the Great Ocean Road a couple of years ago and basically none of the motels/hotels we stayed at had kitchen areas.
I just did an AirBnb with a group of families for just under a week. We almost exclusively at in and the logistics around food was a lot of work. It was probably exacerbated because it was about 20 people with a huge range of ages (many with particular preferences), but not many dietary restrictions. We were concerned upfront about extra food or waste at the end of the trip. Every lunch was "leftovers or sandwiches," the last few meals were also leftovers, and we still threw out an embarrassing amount of food (and had at least 2-3 trips to the grocery store to restock). Want ketchup, salad dressing, or need paprika? Odds are you'll buy a bottle and toss the rest. Decide you want to eat out? You probably have a meals worth of food at home you won't need. We also spent time upfront figuring out if the kitchen had what we needed; like a toaster or a grill.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of cooking at these places. Their knives often suck, the layout isn't usually great, and they'll have cheap cutting boards or the dishwasher won't work.
If it works for people, great. I imagine what works in practice is a few small things to cook at the AirBnB (like eggs or sandwiches) and mix that with takeout. And be ok with the waste and cost (traveling is usually pretty wasteful, anyway).
It's low stress, great conversation starter, gets the crowd together, and in some cases an opportunity for teamwork.
With hotels, I never had any problems. At Hilton, my invoice waited upon arrival. In smaller Italian hotels, they would issue it at the last moment. But it was there. With B&Bs, I had to depend on my luck. They usually said they would issue the invoice, but sometimes they wouldn't. And it's hard to pressure someone living a few countries away.
And that's just to get reimbursed, for tax purposes we have an extra set of requirements. Of course.
- price is often better
- more control over location / amenities
- transparent discounts for longer stays. I don't need housekeeping every day, I do need to able to afford a month of lodging sometimes though
- Having a kitchen is really nice. Even if you don't want to cook, it's nice to be able to make coffee, drinks, microwave something
Also, I've found wifi connectivity so much less reliable at hotels than at Airbnbs, but I'm excited about the "host wifi check" tool mentioned in this article
For multiday stays being able to just have a normal sized fridge and a kitchen worktop can mean breakfasts and lunches can be done for very cheap... meaning modest sustenance budgets cover evening meals more comfortably.
For stays that straddle weekends the locations of apartments can lead to happier employee weekends than them waking up in the business district due to zoning placing the hotels there (which in a lot of American cities felt like it translated into the eateries being closed at the weekend and only the homeless roaming around as most people live in suburbs that have all the life). Bear in mind most travellers will not have rental vehicles, and public transport can prove indecipherable and confusing, so a lot of people travelling for business are on foot and if they're in a nicer suburb their non-working time can be very comfortable.
Sure, cooking for a group might be less expensive, but I have serious doubts that's a primary reason for using a rental home vs hotel/conference space.
And as an aside, as somebody with dietary restrictions, being forced into dining with people who don't share my diet is very off-putting. Add in my co-workers who are vegetarian, vegan, or completely boring (bland, beige American food is all they'll eat) and it's a nightmare. No thanks.