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TRADING SPACES
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AS VISITORS
DISCOVER THE BENEFITS OF CORPORATE HOUSING, THEY ALSO FIND IT EASIER,
THANKS TO THE INTERNET.
BY C.B. ADAMS
Remember Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”? All she had to do was close
her eyes, click her heels, repeat, “There’s no place like home.
There’s no place like home.” And suddenly she really was home. Dorothy’s
modern corporate counterpart, whether consulting for an out-of-town
client for a month or more or spending some time in a new city during
the relocation process, can find a temporary home—not by clicking
her heels—but by clicking her computer mouse.
THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME — OR IS THERE?
Dorothy had it right. There really is no place like home. But when
it comes to temporary housing, the next best thing can be corporate
housing. In the past, when a professional needed a place to stay
during an out-of-town consulting gig or while relocating, he or
she was usually placed at a hotel. Not a bad way to go, but not
exactly “homey,” says Linda Alsup, property manager of Mansion House
in downtown St. Louis.
“If I were to be in a place for a month or two or more, I would
get really tired of a hotel and having to eat out. We offer furnished
and unfurnished apartment homes with full housekeeping and amenities
such as cable, local telephone and a kitchen with pots, pans and
dishes and a garage parking spot,” she says.
In short, all the comforts of hotel living, with more space, according
to Joanne Sousan, general manager of St. Louis Equity Corporate
Housing, which has properties throughout the St. Louis metropolitan
area. The firm is a division of the Equity Residential Properties,
one of the largest property management companies in the nation.
Equity corporate apartments offer a fully-appointed kitchen, quality
home furnishings, and washers and dryers in most units, among other
amenities.
SHORT-TERM AMENITIES, LONG-TERM ADVANTAGES
“Amenities mean a lot to the individual. People these days are more
savvy. They travel and expect a certain level of service wherever
they stay. With corporate housing, they get a lot more space—a full
apartment as opposed to a hotel room. Even though the short-term
stay hotels tout that they include a guest suite with a desk and
the usual business set-up, the client is still eating, sleeping
and working in one room. That’s not really a desirable situation
for a long-term stay,” Sousan says.
Or, as Wendy Foster, director of sales and marketing for Mansion
House puts it, “The hotels offer so much, that we do all we can
to offer the same. We are still part of the hospitality industry,
it’s just that our clients stay for 30 days or more. We focus on
a slightly different market from the hotels, but we still have to
cater to the needs of our clients like a hotel.”
In addition to these benefits, corporate housing offers another
perk: no hotel taxes. “Typically, we are about 50 percent less than
the cost of a hotel. This is another huge reason that people are
using corporate housing, because it saves their companies money,”
Alsup says.
CLICKING INTO CORPORATE HOUSING
“Corporate housing is here to stay. It is viable and very necessary
to meeting the needs of the corporate world,” Sousan says.
There isn’t much new when comparing corporate housing to hotels.
Afterall, a big comfy bed is a big comfy bed. And, local telephone
service is just that. What is changing, however, is how clients
find suitable corporate housing. Although the bulk of contact between
corporate housing providers is still one-on-one, often with a company’s
human resource representative, the Internet is becoming an important
point of contact.
There is, as they say, a website or two for literally any endeavor.
If today’s Dorothy doesn’t want to stay in Kansas anymore, all she
has to do is visit www.corporatehousing.com
(or www.forrent.com
or www.apartments.com or
other similar sites), choose St. Louis, and in a second she can
browse many of the corporate housing units available, including
The New Jefferson Arms.
“We get a lot of leads off of corporatehousing.com. We started advertising
with them back in October and we consistently get 200 hits onto
our website per month,” says Donna Petti, property manager for The
New Jefferson Arms.
Through apartsments.com, Internet visitors can take a 360-degree
virtual tour and view photographs of Jefferson Arms’ corporate apartments.
“After the 360-degree tour, someone can lease a unit without ever
coming here personally. They can get all the appropriate paperwork
through the Internet or via fax. This makes it very convenient for
an individual to find and lease a place to stay.
Alsup, too, is finding the Internet can be a valuable tool. “The
majority of our traffic comes from existing clients and word of
mouth. The companies that do business with us and the people who
live here come back and refer us to others. However, we now get
25 to 30 percent of our traffic from Internet inquiries. We do a
lot of marketing through the Internet as well as personally,” she
says.
Mansion House makes use of its website, www.mansionhouse.com
as well as links with other sites dedicated to relocation. St. Louis
Equity Corporate Housing maintains a website at www.equitycorporatehousing.com
C.B. Adams is a St. Louis-based writer and an adjunct communications
professor at UM–St. Louis and St. Charles Community College.
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