By the Unity Stays directors, Marcus Chong & Gadir Al-Khatib · Last updated 12 August 2026
In short: Book contractor accommodation directly with the operator for anything over about a week — long stays are priced well below nightly platform rates and companies can pay on invoice. For a crew of two or more, a whole property usually beats hotel rooms; before committing, check van parking, a drying space, a real kitchen, broadband and the terms for extending.
Why platform pricing fits this badly
Booking platforms are built around short leisure trips. Their pricing, their filters and their cancellation structures all assume a couple of nights booked by the person staying.
Contract work is the opposite in every respect. Stays run for weeks or months. They are mid-week rather than weekend. They are booked and paid for by a company, not by the guest. They change — a project slips, a phase extends, a crew size moves — and they need an invoice rather than a card receipt.
Trying to force that shape through a nightly booking flow produces the familiar problems: a rate that does not reflect the length of stay, a cancellation policy written for a weekend break, and no way to extend without rebooking at whatever the new nightly rate happens to be.
What to check before committing a crew
The things that go wrong on project accommodation are consistent enough to make a checklist worth having.
- Parking, specifically for vans, and whether it is genuinely on site or a permit scheme with a waiting list
- Early starts — whether check-in and check-out times fit a six o'clock start, and whether anyone objects to it
- Somewhere to dry work clothing, and a washing machine that is not a shared laundry two streets away
- A real kitchen, because a crew eating out for six weeks is a substantial and avoidable cost
- Broadband that holds a call, for the site manager who has to join a meeting from the kitchen table
- What extending looks like — the rate, the notice, and whether the property is available at all
- Who answers on a Sunday, because a boiler failing on a Sunday is a Monday morning problem for the project
Whole properties versus rooms
For a crew of two or more, a whole property is almost always better and frequently cheaper than the equivalent number of hotel rooms.
The reasons are practical rather than financial: shared cooking, somewhere to sit down together in the evening, one set of keys and codes, one invoice, one point of contact. It also avoids the situation where a crew is split across two hotels because the block booking was not available.
The counterweight is that it puts people who work together into a house together, which does not suit every team. Where it does not, separate one-bedroom properties in the same area usually beat a hotel on the same measures.
Booking it properly
Go direct for anything over about a week. Almost every operator prices long stays well below the nightly rate, and platform-listed pricing rarely reflects that.
Give the honest dates including the likely extension rather than the minimum, because it costs nothing to say a project may run long and it materially changes what an operator will hold and at what rate. Ask about invoicing and payment terms before booking rather than at checkout — a company that can invoice on account is a very different proposition from one that needs a card per stay.
And say what the work is. An operator who knows it is a six-week site job will put the property somewhere with parking and a drying space rather than somewhere with a nice view.
What we do
Our properties are set up for work stays: full kitchens, laundry, fast unlimited broadband, self check-in by code so a late finish does not mean a locked door. Longer stays are priced below the nightly rate, and companies can book on invoice.
We manage properties across the UK, and we hold our own stock in a smaller number of places. Where we do not have a property in a town, our business stays pages say so plainly rather than implying coverage we do not have — and we would rather point you somewhere useful than take a booking that does not fit. Tell us the town, the dates and the crew size and you will get a direct answer.