How the Ideal Housing Solution Sets Your Intern Program Apart

With tens of thousands of applicants, employers must start early to handle recruiting, interviewing, hiring, and managing the logistics of short-term employment. These internships are structured to create positive experiences that encourage future full-time employment among top-performing interns.

Recruiters attract interns by highlighting opportunities such as:

• Participation in impactful projects
• Access to leadership and industry innovators
• Experiencing the company culture firsthand

To maximize the value of these experiences, companies must provide quality, high-density housing near headquarters and local amenities. The location and quality of accommodations, and the employer’s investment in interns, play a crucial role in ensuring a successful internship program.

What Do Interns Value Most?

In the past, interns often accepted unpaid or minimally compensated positions with limited incentives, finding their own housing or relying on college dorms and friends. Today, the dynamic has changed; interns and employers both seek high-profile, high-performance internship experiences. Interns now prioritize: 

• Engagement in real-world, challenging projects
• Development of new and marketable skills
• Opportunities to build professional networks
• Assessing skills to determine career paths
• Immersion in company culture

To secure top talent, recruiters and employers offer compelling incentives, including competitive compensation, career development opportunities, and access to a vibrant company culture. These efforts extend to organizing events and fostering community throughout the internship.

The Importance of Employer-Provided Housing

Company-sponsored, accessible housing is a major benefit for prospective interns. Similar to relocation packages offered to key hires, many employers now provide fully managed corporate housing and furnished living options, along with orientation and settling-in services. This ensures interns are prepared from day one and receive seamless support for their housing needs throughout their stay.

Providing quality accommodations signals the employer’s commitment to intern success and acknowledges the importance of work-life balance, even at the early-career stage. Typical features include:

• Convenient locations within commuting distance (often on company shuttle routes)
• Attractive onsite amenities
• Shared workspaces and social gathering areas

These features help interns remain connected in a comfortable environment both on- and off-site.

Addressing Housing Market Challenges

Many internships are based in areas with high housing costs and limited rental availability. Without professional temporary accommodations and support services, interns may struggle to secure suitable housing. Online search tools and short-term rental platforms often fail to provide options that are affordable, commutable, vetted, and secure.

Employer Responsibilities and Value Proposition

Employers have a Duty of Care to all employees, including interns on short-term assignments. Providing appropriate accommodations not only fulfills this obligation but also strengthens interns’ engagement and loyalty as they consider future career opportunities with the company.

The Dwellworks Living Advantage

Dwellworks Living sources housing that meets employer requirements for location, price, density, and amenities, while offering full-service support from job offer through arrival and the duration of the internship. Recognizing that many interns are high-potential talent experiencing business environments for the first time, we simplify key tasks such as:

• Securing suitable accommodations
• Arranging airport transfers
• Providing comprehensive orientation to the property and local area

These services help interns quickly adapt to professional expectations and focus on making a meaningful impact during their assignments.

Pulling It All Together  |  A Case Study for Intern Program Success

Employer Profile: Dwellworks Living has had the opportunity for multiple years to partner with the world’s largest online and in-store retailer and their relocation management company in the development and execution of a comprehensive housing solution for the company’s interns.

The company, known for its commitment to quality and everyday low prices for its customers, also emphasizes innovation, a sense of belonging for associates and customers, and a commitment to sustainability and community. They are investing in technology to improve the customer experience, including AI innovation that is both cutting-edge and committed to ethics and corporate responsibility. As a result, this employer appeals to many of the key factors that interns value in their intern experience but also must compete against other high-profile employers interested in attracting top notch talent to their finance, technology, and retail organizations. 

A Customized and Competitive Intern Housing Program: To support the client’s message of differentiation and opportunity, Dwellworks Living designed an end-to-end client and customer/intern experience focused on flexibility, continuous communication, on-site support, and, of course, furnished housing options that met the client’s criteria for location, price, density, amenities, and quality, and the interns’ expectations for comfortable, contemporary, and easily commutable living.

The client’s intern program included placements at company headquarters, as well as in field assignments, and in key corporate operations locations including New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, where the majority of the interns were assigned. Our housing solutions included both hotel options for the field assignments across 30 locations, and furnished accommodations in the core assignment destinations. 

Service Beyond Housing Support: The Bay Area is one of the most competitive housing markets in the US, and especially so for interns due to the large number of high-profile technology companies who bring thousands of interns into the market every summer.

Our comprehensive program management was built around a detailed project plan that was launched simultaneously with the client’s recruitment plan. Dwellworks Living identified our key partners early in the process, selecting those partners we knew would have access to inventory to meet the requirements of the client and the resources to manage the client’s onsite service expectations. We provided options for client review by early February and then activated a week-by-week plan for communicating with the selected interns.

We focused on frequent intern friendly communication formats, including videos and text messages, as well as detailed landing pages for each property. Getting the interns comfortable for their arrival dates was key, and we prepared instructional videos specific to checking in, especially for those arriving late at night or on weekends. The information was posted to an online resource hub that answered frequently asked questions. Our next iteration will include AI-supported assistants.

Our wrap-around support included automated workflows, customized and personalized communications from our Customer Service Managers to each individual intern, as well as on-site meet and greets, a digital overview of area attractions, and access to our proprietary Xplore app, available in over 100 cities worldwide. We presented thoughtfully curated local information, from sporting events, to preparing for each region’s summer weather, to information about commute options and weekend getaways. Our service included 24-hour duty-of-care with a dedicated intern support team to respond to any issue related to furnished housing.

Most importantly, we activated support and demonstrated our furnished housing expertise in our response to an unplanned crisis when a major unexpected weather event required a redistribution of all the interns scheduled for corporate headquarters assignments to other locations with less than 24 hours’ notice. Our ground team and our service partners were able to adjust arrival dates so that every intern had a confirmed place to stay, aligned with their travel schedules, with minimum disruption.

Positive Results: The outcome of our intern housing program management was the successful placement of 130 interns in the company’s field locations and just under another 150 in key corporate locations.

Dwellworks Living management of the program saved the client over $170k due to negotiated discount pricing. 

Why Dwellworks Living is the Ideal Solution for Intern Housing Programs

Dwellworks Living is a preferred global partner to relocation management companies and employers, providing corporate housing solutions for intern programs, projects and groups, global talent mobility, and business travel to hundreds of Fortune 1000 and emerging companies.

Our approach to housing program management for interns is grounded in our strategy-led approach to client engagement. Working with clients, we confirm the goals of the corporate housing program and work backwards to define and accomplish the essential tasks, tactics, and measurement tools that translate strategy into reality.

The housing solutions we deliver for intern programs are rooted in a deep and well-managed supply chain, which delivers outstanding options, matched to client preferences, from a portfolio of over 80,000 properties globally. As a business partner to some of the world’s best-known companies, we have purposely built a presence in key global employment markets like London, Munich, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Houston, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, and throughout Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas. This depth and the power of our proprietary epic® platform allows us to quickly secure choices for clients for their intern needs, well in advance of move in dates, to secure optimal pricing, preferred dates, and supplier partnership for the flexible requirements of intern program needs.

Providing outstanding furnished housing options is just the beginning. Dwellworks Living leverages the reach and reputation of Dwellworks Destination Services to deliver unique content and local area insights to interns and business professionals in temporary living. Throughout the assignment, our customer service team communicates frequently to our clients’ interns, in advance of arrival and during their stay on property. Dwellworks Living invites every guest in our portfolio properties, including interns, to download our local Xplore app at no charge. The internship is further supported with dedicated landing pages, information hubs, timely automated communications and reminders, and a monitored 24-hour customer hotline, so that every need is responded to and reported on.

About Dwellworks Living

Dwellworks Living is the global corporate housing solution of Dwellworks, an award-winning, business-to-business provider of global mobility and business travel services. As a global leader in corporate housing and serviced accommodations solutions, Dwellworks Living is uniquely positioned to meet the temporary living needs of businesses and their employees who are relocating or traveling on short-, medium- or extended-stays. With 80,000 high-quality professionally managed properties in over 125 countries worldwide, Dwellworks Living is the preferred housing solutions partner of many Fortune 1000 and leading relocation management companies. 

Dwellworks Living's corporate housing and serviced accommodations solutions are designed to help businesses attract and retain top talent, support employee productivity, and ensure a smooth and successful relocation or business travel experience. Whether you have corporate housing needs for an individual employee or a large team, Dwellworks Living can provide the serviced accommodations solutions you need anywhere in the world to ensure a safe and successful stay. Please contact us to learn more or visit our Properties page to begin your search for global housing accommodations.