London still pulls in business travellers like nowhere else in the country. Head offices, client meetings, funding rounds, new market launches, they all tend to route through the capital, and often for longer than anyone planned.

A meeting becomes a week. A project becomes three months. Someone gets seconded and simply does not come back for a while. For the first night or two a hotel is the obvious answer. Past that, the sums and the logistics start working against it, and a growing number of companies have stopped pretending otherwise.

The trouble with a hotel is that it never really stops charging you as though it were night one. The rate barely moves however long you stay, there is nowhere to work beyond the end of the bed, and every meal lands on an expense claim. A private apartment behaves differently. The nightly cost drops as the booking lengthens, there is a kitchen and a living space, and staff settle in rather than living out of a suitcase. That is why firms booking longer stays increasingly look at corporate serviced apartments in central London rather than a run of hotel nights, keeping people close to the main business districts for less than the equivalent room rate over the same stretch.

Run the numbers on anything past two weeks

For a couple of nights the gap is negligible and a hotel is simpler. Stretch the stay to a fortnight or a month and the picture changes. Serviced apartments are usually priced to reward longer bookings, so the effective nightly rate falls the longer someone stays. The kitchen and the washing machine quietly remove two costs that most travel budgets underestimate: three restaurant meals a day and the hotel laundry bill. Put two or three colleagues in one apartment instead of separate rooms and the difference stops being marginal. Any finance director who has actually costed a long assignment both ways rarely asks for the hotel version again.

Space is a business cost, not a perk

There is a tired assumption that the apartment is the indulgent option. On a long stay it is the opposite. Try running a full working day from a hotel room and the limits show up fast. Calls happen from the edge of the bed, there is nowhere to spread out, and work never really ends because the office and the bedroom are the same few square metres. An apartment gives you a desk, a living room, and a bedroom that is only a bedroom. That separation is not a luxury on a three-month posting. It is the difference between someone doing good work for the duration and someone quietly running out of steam by week four, which is an expensive way to lose the value of the trip.

The relocation gap nobody plans for

Then there is the question most growing companies hit eventually: where do you put someone who is moving to London before they have found somewhere to live? A senior hire relocating from another office, a founder splitting the week between two cities, an executive brought in for a fixed term. None of them wants to sign a twelve-month lease sight unseen, and none of them should be parked in a budget hotel for two months. Monthly and long-stay rentals cover precisely that gap. They give a new arrival somewhere to land, work and find their feet while the permanent arrangements catch up, and they can be extended or ended without the weight of a standard tenancy.

How to make it pay

The savings only hold if the booking is done properly. Location earns its keep first. An apartment near the office or on a clean transport link saves hours and cab fares across a long stay, which counts for far more than a slightly lower headline rate somewhere awkward to reach. Match the length of the booking to the actual assignment so you are neither locked in too long nor renegotiating every fortnight. Confirm the things a working stay depends on, which in practice means fast broadband, a proper desk, laundry and a kitchen that can handle more than coffee. And book ahead, because the good central apartments are taken early, particularly in peak season and around the big events the city fills up for.

Hotels are not going anywhere, and for a quick overnight they remain the path of least resistance. But the extended stay is a different job, and treating it as a longer version of a one-night trip is how firms overspend without noticing. Before the next long booking goes through on the usual hotel rate, it is worth putting the two side by side and letting the numbers settle it.