Skift Take
There's certainly a gap emerging for hospitality players to exploit. But with most companies still adjusting to remote working, it may be a little early to pinpoint how they'll want to regroup in the future.
Hospitality startup Ethos thinks it has a solution for the growing number of empty offices. Put employees back inside them.
The company had hoped to officially launch in the spring, with a pre-Covid plan to convert empty commercial and retail spaces into hotels and co-working membership clubs. “I dreamed about activating vacant building spaces by turning them into 'sanctuaries' for self-employed creators and entrepreneurs,” CEO Janko Milunovic wrote in a blog post in January.
Ethos claims these sorts of co-working spaces can be built out five times faster than traditional hotels, by using prefabricated walls it designs off-site. But it hadn't expected coronavirus to wipe out travel and create lockdowns in the way it did, so the pandemic has put this particular dream on pause.
Here's the change in tack, as it has now launched Ethos Remote Habitat. Ethos is teaming up with lodges and boutique hotels in remote locations to offer displaced workers “campus” style breaks to reconnect with co
