New Horizons
The rise of the serviced apartment
By Charles McCrow, The Apartment Service
The UK's first apartments booking service
Started in 1981, The Apartment Service
was one of the first companies to create
a global network of corporate serviced
apartments, and today we are the largest
European booking agent for serviced
apartments.
We book apartments all over the world
on behalf of our clients, delivering
comfort and average savings of 15-30%
on the equivalent standard of
accommodation in a hotel - stays can
be from a few nights to a over a year.
The Apartment Service operates in both
the extended stay and corporate housing
markets recommending options and
solutions with expertise built up over the
years. Knowing what and where to go
for inventory is paramount to get the
best option available.
Apartments allow people
to live as they do at home and with their family
We started purely as an agency, sourcing
& booking apartments owned by 3rd
parties, setting up a network of sales
agents across the globe to help market
the service to the corporate market as
well as to locally source and inspect
suitable property options.
It's taken a long time for serviced
apartments to carve a niche in the
business travel market for reasons of
visibility, availability and bookability.
Or rather a lack of it.
There is now some accessibility to
extended stay inventory via the global
distribution systems (GDS) which are
used by most travel management
companies. However, this inventory is
hard to find and not clearly segmented
in the GDSs so specialist knowledge is
needed to find it.