Workation, how to conciliate work and vacation
While the coronavirus pandemic made several employees lose their jobs, remote work has opened the door to a new approach for people exploring the benefit of working from anywhere. The forced experiment with remote work over the past years has shown some organizations the upside of approaches to work they would never have otherwise considered. This has created a lot of flexibility for remote employees and families in terms of where they can be physically located. What if you could leave your tiny apartment and work from the beach tomorrow? Not bad, right? In this article I’ll introduce to you the concept of workation.
What is workation?
As the name suggests workation, is a working vacation that blends both work time and leisure time. The idea is that you can take a break somewhere, but still continue to work and receive your salary at the end of the month. The term is also spelt as workcation or worcation.
Job fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.
– Jamie Lyn Beatty.
Our Experience with workation
After months of staying inside of home, we were craving for a change in scenery and decided to give it a try and spend one week in the workation mode. We choose as our destination one resort all inclusive in the beautiful Bavaro Beach in Punta Cana.
Because we live in San Francisco, the time zone is -5 hours compared with the Caribbean, so we had every morning free to enjoy the hotel and the city and we spent the rest of our days in the comfort of our rooms with unlimited refreshments and snacks and a great internet connection working.
I had the time of my life without cleaning the dishes or cooking for the entire week. But of course, everything you really need is your laptop and a good internet connection. We simply switch on our laptops and connect with our teams virtually, all the rest is a plus.
Hotels around the world have responded to this newest trend in the industry with a variety of packages. First, hotels have introduced special bundles with unique sets of perks to woo a traveler looking for a place to escape their home office for a day, like the staycations. Later, vacation homes started to offer special packages to encourage families to extend their stay for a week or even longer.
Work from the hotel packages
As the trend caught, Hyatt was one of the first ones to offer the Work From Hyatt package. Then, all the major hotel chains saw an opportunity to meet this new demand of travelers. Later on, Marriott and Hilton followed with packages of their own.
How to live in a hotel – work from Hyatt
Unfortunately, I not being sponsored to talk about the packages, but just to give you an idea, the Work from Hyatt packages start around $130 per night and require a minimum stay of five nights. The idea is to provide the comfort of a home, with the perks of a hotel. Thus, in addition to complimentary high-speed Wi-Fi and a dedicated workspace, guests can have anything from laundry to free rounds of golf, private cabanas by the pool or someone taking care of the kids. Can you imagine?
The top package I heard about is called: Great Relocate, New times, new opportunities, which required a minimum stay of 29 nights. The package includes:
- Housekeeping twice a week
- Complimentary gym access
- Airport or train station pickup
- Up to three hours of complimentary board meeting room usage per month
- IT concierge to help smooth out any tech issues
- 25% off food & beverage**
- 25% off laundry services
- For World of Hyatt members, standard in-hotel benefits including earning points and having nights count toward elite-tier status.
Considering that the average rental in San Francisco is 3-5k USD a month for one bedroom, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to go!
And about you? I’d love to hear your thoughts about workation?
The links are attached if you want to explore more 😉 Maybe we can be neighbors somewhere in the world!
