每天一篇经济学人 | The latest in WFH 最新的在酒店办公...

Will “work from hotel” become a thing?

“在酒店工作”会成为一种潮流吗?

As summer descends with a vengeance on the northern hemisphere, you may be fantasising about the promise of “working from anywhere”. A colleague’s PowerPoint presentation would go down better by the poolside, washed down with a mojito. For most office grunts such fantasies remain just that—“anywhere” boils down to the discomfort of the sweaty kitchen table, a noisy café or the office hot desk. 

【1】with a vengeance 极其；出乎意料

【2】wash down with 就着..喝

【3】to boil down to sth 归结为某事物

随着北半球夏季突然袭来，你可能会幻想“在任何地方工作”的前景。同事的PPT演讲放在泳池边，配上一杯莫吉托，效果会更好。对于办公室里的大多数抱怨者来说，这样的幻想还只是幻想而已，“任何地方”可以归结为在让人热得出汗的厨房桌子上、嘈杂的餐馆或办公室的不固定办公桌这些让人感到不适的地方。

That has not stopped venues offering to combine the liberty of the home office (minus the offspring and the dirty dishes) with the climate control of the corporate hq (minus the boss looking over your shoulder). “Third spaces”, neither office nor home, are not a new idea. Soho House, a chain of fashionable clubs, pioneered 30 years ago the concept of work while mingling with other professionals in an elegant setting. Now hotels are getting in on the action. Your columnist, a guest Bartleby, tried out two recent London offerings.

但这并没有阻止那些”将家庭办公室的自由(没有子女和脏盘子)和公司总部的气氛调节(没有老板在你身后看着你)结合起来的场所。“第三空间”既不是办公室，也不是家，但这并不是一个新想法。苏荷馆是一家连锁的时尚俱乐部，30年前开创了工作的概念，并在优雅的环境中能够与其他专业人士交谈。现在，酒店也加入了这一行列。你的专栏作家巴托比顾客，尝试了两家最近在伦敦推出的“酒店”场所。

She first headed to Birch, a hotel in a Georgian manor on 55 acres of Hertfordshire just north of the city. The venue invites you to “come work miracles” at its Hub co-working area, “set strategies” in spaces “ready to fit 5 or 50” or “connect and create” with classes in pottery, sourdough baking, “foraging with our farmer” and other structured activities. Men, women and gender-fluid people in their 20s and early 30s hunch over laptops and glasses of red wine on the terrace. Some digital nomads pay a monthly membership fee and enjoy special discounts to stay in the property and work remotely, but you can, like Bartleby, come as an overnight guest.

她先去了桦木酒店，这家酒店位于城市北部的赫特福德郡，占地55英亩，是一座乔治王朝风格的庄园。该场所邀请您在联合工作区中心“创造奇迹”，在“可容纳5或50人”的空间“制定策略”，或通过陶艺、面包烘焙、“与我们的农民一起觅食”等结构化活动“连接和创造”。20多岁和30岁出头的男性、女性和性别不固定的人在露台上弓着腰，拿着笔记本电脑和红酒。一些数字游牧民每月支付会员费，并享受住在这里远程工作的特别折扣，但你也可以像巴托比一样，住一晚就走。

Her second destination was the Shangri-La hotel in the Shard, which now offers stays from 10am to 6pm. The pass grants access to a room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on central London, and to Western Europe’s highest infinity pool. It is aimed at those wishing to work and relax by offering a “change of scenery to inspire and invigorate”.

她的第二个目的地是位于碎片大厦的香格里拉酒店，这里现在提供上午10点到下午6点的住宿。通过这张通行证，你可以进入一间有落地窗的房间，在那里可以看到伦敦市中心，还可以享受有着西欧海拔最高的无边泳池。它的目标是那些来工作和放松的人，以期通过“改变环境以受到启发并让自己精神焕发”。

Both Birch and the Shangri-La have their virtues. Birch’s Wi-Fi was excellent and the workspaces had enough sockets to avoid undignified tussles for the last place to plug in your chargers. The “Gentle Flow” stretch class in which Bartleby enrolled, in the spirit of going native, was perfectly pleasant (notwithstanding the instructor’s insistence on starting with an astrological update and reciting a poem at the end). So were laps in the Shangri-La’s infinity pool and the view of St Paul’s Cathedral from her room on the 38th floor.

桦木和香格里拉都有自己的优点。桦木的Wi-Fi非常出色，办公空间有足够的插座，避免了为最后一个插充电器的地方而发生不体面的争执。巴托比参加的舒缓流瑜伽舒展课程，本着“本土化”的精神，非常令人愉快(尽管老师坚持要从星相学的更新开始，背诵一首诗结束)。在香格里拉，她在38层的房间里可以尽情享受香格里拉的无边泳池和圣保罗大教的景色，香格里拉暂时领先。

Yet problems soon became apparent. The first is price. An overnight stay at Birch sets you—or, if you are lucky like Bartleby, your employer—back £160 ($192). The Shangri-La charges £350 for a standard room. Cities have plenty of cheaper “third spaces” these days; a co-working space costs a fraction of that. 

不过，问题很快显现出来。首先是价格。在桦木酒店住一晚要花你160英镑(192美元)，但如果你像巴托比一样幸运的话，这笔钱就是你老板出。香格里拉酒店标间的价格则为350英镑。如今，城市有很多更便宜的“第三空间”；而一个联合办公空间的成本只是这个数字的零头。

The second problem is: how productive can workers be with all the distractions that are designed to make work not feel like work? The spectacular view from the Shard is less conducive to dreaming up a sales pitch (or a column) than it is to daydreaming. At Birch, boardgames occupy every horizontal surface, ready to draw out the procrastinator in you. And once you are done stretching, that sourdough-baking class is a recipe to keep putting work on the back burner. 

【1】put sth on the back burner 暂时搁置某事

第二个问题是：在所有这些让工作感觉不像在工作的干扰下，员工的效率能有多高？从碎片大厦俯瞰的壮观景色，不太有利于构思推销口号(或专栏)，反而更有利于白日做梦。在桦木酒店，棋盘游戏占据了每一个台面，随时准备引诱你的拖延症。一旦你完成舒展运动，面包烘焙会让你暂时搁置工作。

Third, if you resist the temptation to temporise and get down to business, you may as well be at home or the office. The kibbutz-like camaraderie which Birch (and other places like it cropping up everywhere) try so hard to evoke is, ironically, the very thing you miss by staying away from your office mates. While you are updating that spreadsheet or answering emails, luxury hotels’ creature comforts scarcely register. As with most material indulgences, a sense of vacuity descends once the novelty of the marble floors and stacks of fluffy towels wears off. 

【1】crop up 出现

【2】kibbutz 基布兹【以色列的集体农场】

第三，如果你抵制住了拖延的诱惑，开始工作，你还不如待在家里或办公室里。桦木(以及其他类似的地方随处可见)如此努力地想要唤起的那种基布兹式的友情，讽刺的是，这正是你远离办公室同事而避开的东西。当你在更新电子表格或回复电子邮件时，几乎不会注意到豪华酒店的物质享受。和大多数物质享受一样，一旦大理石地板和一堆堆松软的毛巾的新鲜感消失，空虚感就会袭来。

The millennials and Gen-zs meandering around Birch suggest that demand for its hip offerings exists. And hoteliers are wise to work their assets in new ways as they cope with changes to their industry: business travel is, after all, unlikely to return to pre-pandemic patterns for a while, if ever. 

千禧一代和z世代在桦木酒店闲逛，这表明对其时尚场所的需求是存在的。酒店经营者在应对行业变化时，明智的做法是以新的方式利用自己的资产：毕竟，在一段时间内，商务旅行不太可能回到大流行前的模式。

Just do not expect white-collar types to flock to hotels en masse for a hard day’s work. Most of the Shangri-La’s daytime residents seemed to be couples seeking privacy, not executives keen to inspire and invigorate their pitches. As for Bartleby, you will find her at The Economist’s London head office or, failing that, her kitchen table.

只是别指望白领们会为了一天的辛苦工作成群结队地涌进酒店。香格里拉的大部分白天住户似乎都是寻求隐私的夫妇，而不是急于受到启发和焕发精神的想推销口号的高管。至于巴特比，你会在《经济学人》伦敦总部找到她，如果找不到的话，你会在她的厨房餐桌上找到她。