san mateo living room

Some Accommodations are Staged for Sleeping. Our Units are Designed for Living

By Dennis Clemente

If you’re a relocated employee, what do you notice most when you check in to a hotel room? Even if it’s immaculately clean, the room may still be cramped or uninviting. The hotel room has a primary purpose –a place to sleep — as the average stay in it is around two days anyway.

The hotel room may not be the best choice for a relocated employee that has been provided a few months of accommodation by his employer. It lacks critical elements to enjoy activities like cooking, dining, working and even just plain relaxing.

At California Corporate Housing, we consider all aspects of our corporate housing units to make sure it’s all geared to make you feel that you are living your best life. Let’s look at our newest corporate housing unit in San Mateo CA, for example.

The norm with corporate housing is that it has the usual basics. Sure it’ll have a sofa, coffee table and chairs. There is a kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom and a bathroom. The extra space with a full-sized apartment is great.

But we feel that it needs a personal touch to elevate it and make guests feel a comfort level they didn’t think they can achieve. After all, these apartments become their home for long stretches of time – a few months to several years. Knowing this, we design and organize every aspect of the space to match a guest’s preferences and lifestyle.

We customize a lot. Some find customizations hard to implement because they’re hampered by established furnishings/housewares packages, budget, creativity blocks, time constraints, or worse, lack of motivation. We look at the opportunity to provide housing for someone as our chance to put something unique and magical together, and we thoroughly enjoy each step of the process.

We certainly thrive in the details. Below are some of the things we continue to offer to our guests – and the reason we think many of our clients choose us for their employees.

Most corporate homes have a queen-size bed. If there is reasonable space, we throw in a king-size one. You get more real estate in your sleep. Our couples say they are happier for it.

bedroomThe technology matters. You see many other corporate housing rentals carrying small 42-inch generic brands. We spoil our guests with a 55″, 60″ or 65″ HDTV, usually from Sony or Samsung. We have provided curved HDTVs or Ultra 4k HDTVs also when we know a particular guest will enjoy it. In addition, we offer either an Amazon Echo or a Google Home. If the guest works for Sony, for example, their unit will obviously have Sony TVs connected to a Google Home. The corporate housing unit and the technology inside it have to be centered around the Guest. We’re in Silicon Valley after all.

We’re big fans of live plants, especially orchids, succulents, and fiddle leaf figs. Indoor live plants improve air quality, providing high levels of oxygen while also cleaning the air of allergens. Plus, live plants have the power to boost someone’s mood which is enough reason for us to include it.

kitchenWe have full bar carts in our units which are perfect for entertaining others or quietly enjoying a nice cocktail after a long day at work.

We’re hooked on our caffeine and have chosen the Nespresso VertuoLine 2.0 machine, the best in the industry in our opinion, for our corporate housing units. Our guests, especially those from Europe, are always surprised and delighted when we stock their place with this Swiss-born technology. This machine brews coffee and espresso like no other.

Our windows are treated fairly, sometimes lavishly. We mean we give you the window treatment beyond the usual blinds. We pick curtain panels that make sense for the room and the guest. And there’s no doubt that they can instantly bring life and personality to any room.

We have used luxurious Arco-inspired lighting. A clever contraption that doesn’t require ceiling suspension, the Arco lamp looks like a streetlight with its adjustable arc. Having attained iconic status when it appeared in a James Bond movie, our guests see it and admit to now liking their lights swiveling, not stirred. It just provides precise lighting control.

closetWe paint accent walls. We haven’t heard many others in our industry routinely do this, but we do it because it helps personalize the apartments. One Wimbledon fan got his walls painted purple and green complete with vintage tennis rackets as wall decor. In the same example of the recent 2BR in San Mateo CA, we chose ‘dovetail’ and ‘peacock plume’ to complement the guest’s warm yet vibrant personality. Again, no choices should be arbitrary.

We customize our rentals to show how temporary homes can be individualized and transformed for guests to feel at home.

Upgraded shower heads, blazingly-fast Wi-Fi, latest models of iHome clock radios, and Bluetooth-enabled everything – the list continues. Contact us at 1.800.880.2720 or email us at stay@calcorporatehousing.com anytime to learn more. You can also see pics of our other projects on our Instagram page.