Need to Know
08 : 04 : 21

Australia – Car brand Jeep is encouraging Australians to experience remote working in an off-grid, purpose-built home office.

For its Working Far From Home campaign, the company is hosting a competition in which one winner and their guest will experience a unique take on remote working – staying in a rarely explored coastal location in north-west Tasmania. Jeep will give the winners an opportunity to work for one week from a Spacecube office pod located in this remote part of Australia, alongside access to a demo Jeep vehicle in order to explore locally.

To encourage a more meaningful escape, the brand is also partnering with tourism platform Empty Esky to help remote workers support communities impacted by the Australian bushfires. In this way, Jeep is tapping into the reality of remote working for many of its customers, while encouraging adventure and escape from traditional home office environments.

With bleisure experiences largely at a halt during the inter-Covid period, brands are getting experimental and forging new ways to engage Wandering Workers.

New York – Andaz 5th Avenue, part of the Hyatt hotel group, is launching seven Wellness Suites to bolster guests’ mental and physical health.

The suites are designed around three tenets of wellness: Feel, Fuel and Function. Partnering with external wellbeing brands, the suites feature amenities and products designed to support sleep, nutrition, movement and cognitive functionality. Among the in-room services are a Lululemon smart mirror for fitness, an Airweave mattress, meditations curated by Headspace, and a wellness mini bar offering snacks and drinks to bolster immunity and energy.

‘As a hotel company, Hyatt is driven by a purpose of care and we pro-actively bring that purpose to life,’ says Will Brandon, director of sales and marketing at Andaz 5th Avenue. ‘We like to identify ways to enhance the guest experience, and there’s been a heightened awareness of health and wellbeing accelerated by Covid-19.’

While we previously explored the rise of Hospitality Fitness, hotel brands are now expanding their efforts to serve both mental and physical wellbeing demands.

Younger US consumers have consistently felt comfortable eating at restaurants in the inter-Covid period, according to research by Morning Consult.

In fact, its research shows that 46% of US Millennials currently feel comfortable eating at a restaurant. Across all adults, comfort levels grow where outdoor dining is offered over indoor-only tables – 53% say they feel safe with that option, compared to 41% who feel safe eating inside restaurants.

Of note, US adults in suburban regions were most comfortable dining outside at present, versus those living in urban or rural areas. These findings indicate an appetite among younger, suburban consumers to dine at restaurants once again, providing fresh opportunities for restaurants to connect with this demographic, in particular through novel yet safe dining experiences.

In the Pandemic Dining Market, we identify some of the ways that restaurateurs can cater to consumers’ expectations of safety, while reclaiming their role in the public realm.