Comment by gruturo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruturo | Hacker News Reader

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I agree with your point, generally, but after COVID-19, remote working is opening new use cases: I occasionally like to travel to somewhere nice, far away from the office, and work from there for a week, because I'm now allowed to.

So I too now care about a decent chair, desk and maybe even a tv I could turn into a second screen. Wifi can be there or not, I bring my own connectivity just to play it safe, this is now quite cheap. Bonus if the place is a couple time zones away from my office so I have my mornings or afternoons free.

I'm not a huge fan of AirBnB but it's been more reliable than hotels for a few of these factors: hotel TVs are locked-down and many won't accept an HDMI input, assuming there's a socket at all. Normally you're not offered (barring extravagant prices) more than just a bedroom, so the chance of table and chair being any good (or existing) are not so good), etc.

As far as business investments go, I’d need to see some really solid market research showing enough people were willing to choose a hotel for these amenities in-room rather than a one with a “business center” as many currently have, a coworking space, coffee shop, or even a public library. People wanting specialized private spaces like that don’t generally look to hotels to meet their needs, and considering how quickly hotel room outfitting expenses scale, it really has to be worthwhile. For example, an in-room stationary bike would probably be cheaper and more popular than a good office chair and monitor, but it just doesn’t make sense because enough people will be satisfied with an in-hotel fitness center. I think its really easy to assume our use cases are far more universal than they are.

As someone who has thought about this remote style, but hasn’t done it, I don’t think I’d want to be in the hotel room much. I’d much rather find a coffee shop to work from where I can get some of the vibe of the city while still working.

Otherwise, you’d only get a few hours per day in the evening of experiencing anything you couldn’t do at home, so what’d be the point of spending home rent +hotel +travel for the week?

I suppose it depends somewhat on why you're there and how well you can work in an ambient social environment. Mind you, I don't really disagree but, if I'm focused on a computer screen, I'm not sure how schlepping my laptop to a random coffeeshop is that different from being in my hotel room.

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