Posted on Monday, May 05 2025
There’s a common misconception corporate housing – also called executive suites – is mainly useful for individuals: a relocating employee, someone displaced by a disaster, or a digital nomad on an extended trip.
In reality, corporate housing is one of the most flexible and scalable workforce accommodation solutions available. It delivers home-like environments with kitchens, laundry, and extra space – typically at half the cost of hotels – and it can support entire teams over months at a time.
The four use cases below represent some of the most common – and highest-impact – ways organizations are using furnished rentals today.
Enterprise IT projects at client sites
Large digital transformation projects can run for months – from needing assessment through build, testing, and launch – and often require multiple specialist teams working together on-site. Flying professionals back and forth between head office and client site, and housing them in hotels for extended stretches, can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to a project budget. Corporate housing provides far more comfortable, spacious accommodations at roughly half the hotel rate. Fully-equipped kitchens also eliminate the need for costly daily meal expenses, reducing per-diem spend significantly over a multi-month engagement.
Employee relocations that don’t have to be permanent right away
Global mobility professionals estimate as many as half of all employee relocations fail in the first year, often due to misaligned expectations or poorly-understood requirements on both sides. This is expensive for the organization and potentially devastating for the employee, especially if they’ve already sold a home or broken a lease. Corporate housing gives employees and their families a low-commitment way to test a new location before making permanent decisions. A one-bedroom furnished rental for a month or two, or a furnished family home for a few months while everyone finds their footing, can be the difference between a successful relocation and a costly failed one.
Temporary healthcare teams and travelling medical staff
Many Canadian hospitals now rely on temporary healthcare professionals – nurses, administrators, surgical teams – on a medium- or long-term basis. Asking these professionals to locate, rent, and set up housing themselves before they can start working creates unnecessary delays and stress. Hotels and per diems at that scale aren’t viable either. Because corporate housing is fully furnished and move-in ready – furniture, bedding, linens, kitchen equipment all included – healthcare staff can be on-site within a day or two of initial request. And because furnished rental providers can scale up quickly, a hospital that needs 8 suites one month and 30 the next can be accommodated without friction.
Construction and skilled trade crews working away from home
The GTA currently has more construction cranes than any other city in North America, and construction projects across Canada regularly recruit nationally to fill skilled trades positions. A power plant team in Moncton may draw professionals from Ontario, Quebec, and the eastern provinces; a suburban development in New Westminster may have recruited from Alberta or the Yukon. Where bunkhouses and on-site trailers once served this workforce, competition for skilled trades has raised the bar. Corporate housing, from large furnished homes that can accommodate multiple workers to private studios and one-bedrooms, has become a key tool for attracting and retaining the talent that keeps projects on schedule and on budget.
How much cheaper is corporate housing compared to hotels?
Corporate housing typically costs about half the nightly rate of comparable hotel accommodation. For teams staying weeks or months, this translates into very significant budget savings – often hundreds of thousands of dollars on large projects.
How quickly can corporate housing be arranged for a team?
Because furnished rentals are move-in ready – with furniture, kitchen equipment, bedding, and linens already in place – staff can be accommodated within one to two days of an initial request in most cases.
Can corporate housing scale up or down as team size changes?
Yes, this is one of corporate housing’s core advantages over hotels and traditional leases. Providers can add or reduce units as project needs evolve, making it well-suited for healthcare staffing, phrased construction projects, and multi-stage IT rollouts.
Is corporate housing available across Canada?
Premiere Suites is the largest corporate housing provider in Canada, with over 15,000 furnished suites, homes, and townhomes nationwide, plus a broader network of more than 10,000 properties – making coverage available across virtually every major market in the country.
What types of accommodations does corporate housing include?
Options range from furnished studio apartments for solo workers to large homes that can house multiple crew members at once. All units come fully equipped with furniture, kitchen appliances and supplies, bedding, and linens.
Premiere Suites has worked with thousands of organizations worldwide – from nursing and construction teams to IT projects and new corporate headquarters. Contact our team today to find out how we can support your next project.