Fed up with working from home? Vancouver hotel offers rooms during the day

Hotel offers a quiet place to work With tourists staying away, one Vancouver hotel is hoping to attract new guests who are having trouble focusing while working from home.

Vancouver — When Hotel Belmont in downtown Vancouver opened in May 2019, it was an immediate success. But all that changed when COVID-19 all but shut the industry down in March.

“Typically we would be full on a nightly basis. However, we are nowhere near that the last couple of months,” said general manager Jeff Leung. "We feel we should think outside the box."

So the hotel has started offering a "Work from Hotel Belmont" package for people who are fed up with working from home during the pandemic.

“Me, as a parent of three daughters, it’s tough to work from home,” said Leung. “We feel we can offer something that’s private, exclusive. They can focus and get their productivity up.”

The rooms can be booked for 12 hours at a time, with check-in anytime between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. They come with a work space and assistance from the front desk for tasks like printing documents and food delivery.

While they also come with beds, Leung says they are for one guest at a time, who’s there to work. “It’s strictly business, productivity, getting work done in a private space.”

“I think it’s a brilliant idea,” said Ingrid Jarrett with the B.C. Hotel Association. “It enables somebody to leave their home in the morning, go and have a great productive work day, come home and there’s a semblance of order. Right now working from home for many, many people doesn’t work very well.”

Leung says the idea is working at hotels in Asia and the U.S. and thinks it could be successful in Vancouver.

“Hopefully we can get some traction going,” he said. “Honestly, we are just trying anything out at the moment. It’s life support survival mode right now.”