Google luring workers back to office with ‘summer special’ at on-site hotel
Google hopes that offering its staffers a “summer special” at a hotel located on its Mountain View, Calif., campus will lure them back to the office.
The search giant said its full-time workers can book a room at the on-site hotel for $99 per night as part of a seasonal discount, according to materials obtained by CNBC.
Google, which currently requires workers to come into the office three times a week, said that the offer will run through Sept. 3 in hopes that living near the office will “make it easier for Googlers to transition to the hybrid workplace,” according to the outlet.
“Just imagine no commute to the office in the morning and instead, you could have an extra hour of sleep and less friction,” the special’s description states.
“Next, you could walk out of your room and quickly grab a delicious breakfast or get a workout in before work starts.”
However, the promotion is only applicable for unapproved business travel, and will not be reimbursed by the company, CNBC found.
Employees were also told that they must use their personal credit cards to book a stay at the hotel if they want to take advantage of the seasonal discount.
Google has been urging staffers to return to the office since April of last year, when it made the the three- days-a-week mandate.
This past June, the company cracked down on office attendance and began tracking employee badge swipes.
The move outraged its workforce, with some employees grumbling “they’re being treated like schoolchildren.”
This new gentler approach doesn’t seem like it will entice many to swipe their credit cards, according to conversations on Google’s internal discussion forum, Memegen, reviewed by CNBC.
At $99 a night, the hotel would amount to roughly $3,000 a month, employees pointed out.
“If it was around $60 a night, that could be a fine-ish alternative to apartments, but $99? No thanks,” one staffer wrote.
“I pay more and get a lot less in total for my apartment. Though admittedly where I live is much better,” another employee wrote.
Other workers joked in the forum that living on Google’s campus for the summer would spell bad news for maintaining a work-life balance, according to CNBC.
The leaked internal forum also included a highly-rated meme from the “Mean Girls” movie where the main character, played by Lindsey Lohan, says “No, thank you.”
Google spokesperson Ryan Lamont said in a statement to The Post: “We regularly run accommodation specials for local or traveling Googlers to take advantage of our spaces and amenities. We advertise these in a regular Perks email which also contains discounts for employees on other services and entertainment options.”
The Google-owned hotel is situated on the big tech company’s newer campus — the Bay View canopy campus, which opened in May 2022 following five years of construction.
Just as its name suggests, the 1.1 million-square-foot, 42-acre Bay View canopy campus is an eye-catching building notable for its futuristic construction, which appears to be draped in multiple awnings.
It’s located adjacent to NASA’s Ames Research Center, Bay View is home to two office buildings, a 1,000-person event space, 30 different courtyards and atriums and a four-building hotel complex with 240 short-stay accommodations for employees.
About 4,000 employees report to the Bay View campus, CNBC reported.
It’s unclear how much the ground-up development cost the tech giant — whose corporate parent Alphabet recently reported Q2 revenue of $74.6 billion, which beat Wall Street estimates.
