When should an employee move out of a hotel and into a serviced apartment?
It sounds like a straightforward question. Yet it's one that many organisations still haven't answered.
In AltoVita's 2026 survey of 100 senior travel and mobility professionals, 67% of organisations said they have no defined policy for when an employee should switch from a hotel to a serviced apartment.
Among the 33% that do, the threshold ranges from seven nights to six months.
Extended stays account for a significant share of accommodation spend. In fact, 56% of respondents said stays of 5+ nights represent over 10% of their accommodation spend.
Without a clear policy, accommodation choices often come down to individual travellers or bookers. This makes spend harder to track, savings harder to identify and duty of care standards harder to apply consistently.
The range of answers points to a wider challenge: there's still no agreed definition of an “extended stay”. AltoVita's 2023 research highlighted the same issue, and it remains unresolved. Seven nights is the most common threshold among organisations with a policy, but it's far from universal.
A global financial services organisation featured in our research introduced a “travel less, stay longer” policy, making serviced accommodation the default for trips of 4+ nights. The change was informed by data, supported by a formal RFP and designed to balance cost savings with employee wellbeing.
A good switch-point policy should do three things: establish a clear threshold across Business Travel and Global Mobility, reflect the organisation's own length-of-stay data, and build the decision into the booking process so travellers and bookers don't have to remember it.
AltoVita's white paper on consolidating accommodation for Global Mobility and Business Travel explores how to set that threshold as part of a wider consolidation roadmap.
The white paper explores how organisations are deciding when to move employees from hotels to serviced apartments, alongside the full survey findings and a seven-step roadmap to a more consolidated accommodation programme.