Our focus

The Apartment Service's focus has been to meet the needs of those who need accommodation for more than a week at a time. The company was among the first responsible for bringing the corporate housing market to the UK, and therefore a wider range of accommodation options to both the business travel world, and also to the relocation market.

Business travel buyers are now being tasked with housing extended stays and long term assignments. At the same time, relocation agents are reporting a proliferation of shorter-term assignments, which in their terminology, is anything less than a year. The year-long stay is an important benchmark, as for instance, longer stays have IRS implications for US nationals.

Both ends of the temporary assignment market are therefore converging to create greater demand for the same sort of product, and in some ways things have come full circle and we are once again providing information and reservation services. However we are now creating more strategic, consultancy-style solutions for specific organisations as well. When the Royal Danish Air Force needed to train its pilots and mechanics on the (then) new Hercules aircraft, The Apartment Service housed rotating groups of personnel in 20 apartments at RAF Lyneham for the two-year duration of the project, effectively providing a facilities management service. In fact, we are now working with relocation agents around Europe to provide a network able to offer this kind of bespoke solution on projects of six months or more.

Knowledge and expertise

Today the company is developing data feeds that enable clients to access inventory, availability and content through different channels including GDS. Clients and agents are at differing levels of advancement in terms of knowledge and actual integration of apartments into corporate programmes; So we are meeting a real need by providing that knowledge and expertise.

A whole new world is opening up to business travel buyers that few knew existed. 21st century corporate accommodation solutions are no longer simply about business travellers staying in hotels. It now encompasses short and long term assignments, meetings, remote working and even commuter travel patterns, whilst Duty of Care has made HR a stakeholder in the travel procurement process.

Where have we come to after 27 years in business? I believe that today The Apartment Service is now a ready-made reference source and font of knowledge to companies willing to take a more holistic view of their travel needs.