If Thanksgiving at your home became a siege of occupying visitors camping in and unwilling to depart soon enough, put them up in a home away from home when they return this holiday season -- or anytime.

With demand down for corporate housing and travel accommodations in general, the corporate housing industry is rolling out the red carpet for travelers looking for all the comforts of home.

Corporate housing giant, Los Angeles-based a Oakwood Worldwide is leading the way offering a "Family Place to Stay" program through Jan. 5, 2002, in locations throughout the United States and overseas. There is a five-day minimum stay requirement, but rates are as low as $69 in Silicon Valley area communities a night for a fully furnished, fully equipped studio with everything from a telephone answering machine to wine glasses.

Think about it -- in larger two-bedroom units for about $100 a night in some areas, including Florida, Illinois, Idaho, Louisiana, Arizona communities and others, kids can have their own bedrooms and bath, adults can cook meals somewhere other than your kitchen and there won't be a line for the washer and dryer.

Charles E. Smith, with corporate housing locations in Chicago, Washington and Boston is offering Internet-based deals with $10 to $20 and more off daily rates, based on longer 30-day stays, but all you need to bring is your own food and clothing.

Typical of the latest corporate housing facilities, Smith's units come with high-speed Internet access, unlimited local telephone service, large-screen color TV, VCR, basic cable service, kitchens equipped with major appliances including a microwave, dishwasher, and icemaker as well as cookware, table settings, bed and bath linens, toiletries and just about everything else you'd need to run a home.

"The hotel industry is in flux, and the line between corporate housing, extended-stay facilities and hotels is blurred. For example, corporate-housing facilities often advertise in travel magazines, offer three-day minimum stays and sell themselves as combining the spaciousness and comfort of home with the services of a hotel," according to Monica Witt, an associate in the Land Use, Environment and Energy Department of Los Angeles-based law firm Jeffer, Mangels, Butler & Marmaro.

In Witt's "Corporate Housing Confuses Industry, Communities" written for Hotel & Motel Management magazine she says corporate housing has become the darling of the hotel industry because it provides flexible housing that keeps it from becoming a victim of market conditions.

"Savvy developers are exploring whether corporate-housing facilities that look and feel like hotels create new market opportunities by combining the best of all worlds: the easier entitlement process associated with residential development, the absence of transient occupancy taxes and business taxes, an avoidance of management/labor issues and onerous business regulations, and the increased profits typically associated with a successful hotel business," Witt writes.

Today's beleaguered hotel and corporate housing market gives corporate housing operations a definite edge.

"Many corporate-housing facilities have been approved as multi-family housing on property that is not zoned for commercial uses. As a result, they garnered development incentives such as increases in the permitted building height, number of stories, and floor area ratio; exemptions from environmental review and discretionary approvals; and relief from onerous development requirements such as guest parking, kitchens, private open space and, in mixed-use projects, separate and secure access," she says.

The bottom line for consumers is a place to call home when there's no room at the inn -- or your place.

For more articles by Broderick Perkins, please press here.

Published: November 29, 2001

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.