Serviced apartments: when a stay is counted in months

A consultant arrives for a three-month assignment. He does not want a bed made every morning: he wants a kitchen to cook his dinner in, a connection that holds through his meetings, clean linen once or twice a week, and to know exactly what he will pay at the end of the month. That is a different trade from short-stay hotel work, even if the building looks similar.

Neither a hotel nor an ordinary letting

Serviced apartments sit between two worlds, and their specificity lies in borrowing from both without being either.

From hotel work they keep the furnishing, the linen provided, the cleaning, the welcome, the security of the building and flexibility of duration. From letting they keep the resident's autonomy, the fitted kitchen, the long stay, periodic billing and often a security deposit.

It is not for all that an ordinary residential letting: the home is delivered ready to live in on the day of arrival, charges are generally included, a maintenance service comes regularly, and the resident brings neither furniture nor utility contracts.

The legal regimes applying to such operations — the nature of the contract, its duration, the deposit, reporting obligations, taxation — vary considerably between countries and sometimes with the length of stay. An operator enquires with the competent authority where the building is; no arrangement observed elsewhere transfers.

A minimum stay that shapes the whole model

Most residences set a minimum length of stay, often different according to the size of the home. That is not an arbitrary commercial constraint: it is what makes the model workable.

Every change of resident is expensive: a full clean, an inventory check, making good, a vacant period, entry and exit formalities. Over one night that cost is unbearable; over three months it dissolves.

It shapes the clientele too: work assignments, transfers, family relocations, extended medical stays, companies housing teams. Those clients compare not nightly rates but what is included, how reliable the services are and how quiet the building is.

Price levels, thresholds for reductions and billing arrangements depend on the local market, the duration, the type of home and the operator's policy. No general scale exists, and no promise of profitability can be drawn from a model observed elsewhere.

Availability is thought about in weeks

Occupancy tracking exists as in a hotel, but the unit changes: you no longer think in nights but in periods.

You must know at any moment: which homes are free and from what date, which are occupied and until when, which are booked for a future entry, which are held back for works, and which stays are ending. That last piece is the most strategic: a departure announced three weeks ahead leaves time to re-let; discovered the day before, it produces a vacancy.

The risk of committing the same home twice exists here too, but it concerns long periods: the consequences are counted in weeks. A single source of availability, consulted before any commitment and updated immediately, remains the only reliable defence.

Moving in: condition report and inventory

This is the stage that most clearly separates serviced apartments from a hotel. You are not just handing over a key: you are handing over an equipped home, with its contents.

An entry condition report describes the state of the rooms, equipment and finishes; an inventory lists what is provided — furniture, appliances, crockery, utensils, linen — and its condition. Both are done jointly, with the resident present, preferably with dated photographs.

Without them, any discussion on departure becomes a matter of memory, and the security deposit a source of conflict. The rules applying to the deposit — amount, conditions for return, timing, permissible deductions — are a matter of the contract and of national law, and follow from no universal custom.

Moving in is also the moment to explain how things actually work: access and security, cleaning days, how to report a fault, what the charges include, whom to contact outside office hours.

The fitted kitchen shifts the boundary of service

An apartment with a kitchen changes the nature of the offer: the resident cooks for themselves. The operator does not serve meals, but supplies and maintains the equipment.

That creates concrete responsibilities: appliances in working order, a refrigerator that holds temperature, working hob and oven, complete and clean crockery on arrival, sound drainage and ventilation, waste managed at building level.

It also creates a boundary to hold between the resident's ordinary upkeep and what falls to the operator. An oven to replace is not a burnt saucepan: saying so on arrival avoids arguing about it on departure.

Periodic cleaning and linen

Cleaning does not happen between two guests, it happens while the resident is living there, at agreed intervals. That is an entirely different organisation.

It means fixing the visit days, knowing who enters and in what capacity, respecting personal belongings, leaving a record of the visit, and providing for the resident being away or wanting to postpone. Linen follows the same rhythm, which means holding spare sets for every home.

How often visits and changes occur is a matter of what the operator has announced and what the contract provides; it follows from no universal standard. What matters is that it is stated clearly before arrival and kept.

On cleaning products, the work consists in organising their use — separate storage, labelling, ventilation, protection of the people handling them, following the manufacturer's instructions — not in improvising mixtures or doses.

Charges included: water, electricity, connectivity

Many residences include charges in the rate. That is a strong commercial argument and a heavy operational commitment: the operator becomes responsible for the continuity of services the resident cannot manage themselves.

Water comes first, because it governs the bathrooms, the kitchen and the cleaning. The World Health Organization points out that microbial contamination of faecal origin is the greatest risk to drinking-water safety, and promotes a water safety plan approach that manages risks from catchment to consumer. It also notes that storage containers can become breeding grounds and that covering them reduces that risk. A building that stores its own water must therefore design, maintain and check that storage.

Electricity follows the same logic: over several months, an outage is not a passing inconvenience but a failure of what was sold. Grid, generator, solar, batteries or a combination: the choice depends on local context and available reliability, none is compulsory in itself, and what matters is having planned for failure.

Connectivity, finally, has become a first-rank service for a clientele that works from home. It is handled like the other charges: sized, monitored, repaired.

Working in an occupied home

This is the difficulty peculiar to long stays: maintenance no longer happens in an empty room between two guests, but in someone's home.

That calls for a method: take the report, assess urgency, agree a slot, warn before entering, work with the resident's agreement, leave the home in order, confirm the problem is solved. An unannounced visit damages the relationship more surely than the fault itself.

The registers must also be kept apart: cleaning is not checking, checking is not repair, and some work belongs to a qualified professional. The requirements applying to the building — personal safety, electrical installations, fire prevention and safety, accessibility — depend on the country, the nature of the building and its size. The operator applies the local rules and enquires with the competent authorities rather than transferring a practice seen elsewhere.

Billing, deposit and records

Over a long stay, billing becomes a recurring process rather than a single settlement. It may be monthly, based on an agreement for corporate stays, or staged differently under the contract.

Accepted payment methods vary between countries — cash, mobile money, card, transfer, other local solutions — and none is universal. Traceability is more nearly so: every payment must be attached to a home, a resident and a period, and the state of each file — paid, part-paid, outstanding — legible without reconstruction.

The security deposit is returned, which earns it particular care: its amount, its purpose, what may be deducted and within what time are written down before entry and applied as written on departure, on the basis of the condition report and inventory.

Data, security and privacy over a long stay

A residence collects more than a hotel: identity, contact details, sometimes an employer, household composition, duration, means of payment, and a prolonged presence in a monitored building.

Good practice stays the same — collect only what is used, limit access, retain securely, share only with those who need it — but its weight grows with the duration. Legal obligations depend on the country: the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, adopted on 27 June 2014 in Malabo, covers electronic transactions, personal data protection and cybersecurity, but produces effects only in the States that have ratified it.

The staff — reception, cleaning, security, maintenance — are covered by national labour law. Convention No. 172 of the International Labour Organization on working conditions in hotels and restaurants, adopted on 25 June 1991 and in force since 7 July 1994, covers workers in hotels and similar establishments providing lodging, and leaves it to each State to define the categories covered. Whether serviced apartments fall within that scope is therefore a question of national law.

Departure and putting the home back on the market

Moving out mirrors moving in: a joint condition report, an inventory check, a record of anything missing or damaged, settlement of the account, return of the deposit as agreed, recovery of access.

Then comes making good: a full clean, checking the equipment, replacing what has to be replaced, minor works, then release for re-letting. In equipped homes that phase takes longer than simply turning a room round, and it determines the date from which the home can be advertised as available.

What a residence must be able to show

Professionalism shows in simple things: a stable identity and contact details, homes presented with the equipment they actually have, what is included in the rate stated without ambiguity, written terms, a contract, a condition report, invoices, and follow-up on requests for repairs.

The Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, adopted in 1999 by the General Assembly of the World Tourism Organization and acknowledged by the United Nations two years later, is a non-binding frame of reference for responsible hospitality, insisting on informing travellers and on respect for local laws and practices.

Digital tools support this work without replacing it: an occupancy calendar, request tracking, recurring billing, document management. Artificial intelligence can help draft a description or sort requests. It must not announce unverified availability, confirm a home, change a rate on its own, promise the return of a deposit, or expose a resident's data.

Finally, this article describes a trade; it replaces neither legal advice nor a regulatory check. The applicable regimes vary from country to country, and every operator enquires with the competent authorities where their building is.