Google has built a hotel for company employees, where a room costs $ 99 per night

A hotel for company employees has opened on the territory of Google’s Mountain View campus. The tech giant hopes to bring back to the office those remote employees who are dissatisfied with the high prices of housing near the office. Rooms with a «special summer offer» are available for $ 99 per night.

The hotel is located on the campus, which opened in May 2022. It should accommodate 4000 people in total.

According to CNBC, housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area are very high due to limited supply and high demand. Most tenants are highly paid IT professionals and top managers. In Mountain View, the housing shortage is particularly acute: there are many offices here, some of which are owned or leased by Google. All this causes dissatisfaction among the company’s employees, whom the tech giant is actively returning to their offices after the pandemic.

«Imagine not having to go to the office in the morning, and instead you can sleep an extra hour, then eat a delicious breakfast or work out before work. And at the end of the day, you can enjoy a quiet evening on the terrace or take part in local entertainment,» Google writes.

The company expects that the offer will «facilitate the transition to a hybrid mode,» but employees themselves reacted to the initiative with irony. First of all, because of the price, which at $ 99 per day is almost $ 3000 per month.

«If the rooms were about $ 60 a night, it would be a good alternative to apartments, but $ 99? No thanks,» wrote one employee. Another noted that he would have agreed to the $ 99 price if it included full meals and daily cleaning. Yet another joked that living on campus in the summer would disrupt the «work-life balance.»

Google began returning employees to the offices for three days a week last year, but faced discontent due to the high cost of housing near the offices. Some employees believe that their productivity is higher when working remotely. Nevertheless, in June 2023, the company tightened working conditions by starting to track office attendance through the use of passes.