For a growing number of professionals, that freedom is already part of everyday life. Remote workers can extend trips without taking additional time off, freelancers can move between cities without stepping away from clients, and business travellers can work around meetings rather than losing an entire day to transit.
The scale of location-independent work reflects how established this behaviour has become. MBO Partners’ 2025 research on digital nomads found that 18.5 million American workers identified as digital nomads, an increase of 153% since 2019.
But the ability to work almost anywhere has exposed a less glamorous problem: not everywhere is actually a good place to work.
Technology solved much of the mobility problem remarkably quickly. Cloud software, video conferencing, messaging platforms and mobile connectivity have made it possible for many jobs to travel wherever the worker goes.
The physical workspace has been harder to replace.
A coffee shop might be perfectly adequate for answering emails but less useful for a confidential client call. An airport lounge can make a long connection more productive, but announcements and foot traffic do not disappear because someone has a deadline. A hotel lobby might be comfortable for catching up on messages, while several hours of focused work can require something quieter and more private.
Coworking spaces have filled part of that gap, particularly for people staying in one place for longer periods. Yet they are not always where someone happens to need them, and the needs of a traveller with four free hours can be very different from those of a remote worker settling into a city for a month.
The freedom to work from anywhere creates a second question: where can you actually work well?
Remote work is often discussed as though it were a single activity. A typical workday suggests otherwise.
Answering messages might require little more than Wi-Fi and a chair. Preparing a presentation may require several uninterrupted hours. Video calls introduce questions about background noise and privacy. Creative or analytical work can become considerably harder when conversations, music and people moving through a public space are constantly competing for attention.
Research into workplace design supports the idea that the environment matters. One study examining cognitive performance across different workplace settings found that performance improved when workers moved from an open-plan area into quieter zones and individual rooms, reinforcing the importance of quiet spaces for concentration.
Then there are the practical requirements that rarely appear in the romantic version of working while travelling: keeping devices charged, sitting comfortably for several hours, taking a call without broadcasting it to everyone nearby and trusting the internet connection when an important meeting begins.
There is no universally perfect remote workspace because there is no universally identical workday.
At home, most remote workers eventually establish some kind of routine. They know where they can take a call, where they can concentrate and what they need to get through the day.
Travel removes much of that predictability.
Someone might finish a morning meeting several hours before an evening train. A traveller extending a weekend could need to work on Monday before heading home that night. A freelancer moving between accommodations can find themselves with a substantial gap between checkout and the next place they can settle in.
Even leisure travel increasingly overlaps with work. An important call does not necessarily respect a sightseeing itinerary, just as a deadline does not disappear because someone has a flight later that evening.
Those situations do not always require another night of accommodation. Often, what is missing is much simpler: a reliable place to work for part of the day.
Hotels are an interesting part of this changing workspace because they were never designed exclusively for sleeping.
Business travellers have worked from hotel rooms for decades. Lobbies and lounges have long doubled as informal meeting places. Many larger hotels already have Wi-Fi, desks, seating areas and business facilities because their guests expect to work while travelling.
The difference is that someone who needs those things for a few hours does not necessarily need somewhere to sleep that night.
Hotels are another option, particularly when privacy or several uninterrupted hours matter. A look at day use hotels in London available through HotelsByDay.com turns up hotels including the Hilton London Bankside, The Royal Horseguards Hotel and Leonardo Royal Hotel London Tower Bridge, all examples of properties where a traveller can move beyond the coffee-shop setup and work from a private room for the day.
That can be useful when the work itself calls for more privacy. Someone joining a video call has different requirements from someone answering emails over coffee, and neither necessarily needs a room for the night.
The same principle extends beyond London. As work becomes more mobile, the usefulness of a space increasingly depends on whether it is available when someone actually needs it.
None of this means remote workers suddenly need hotel rooms every time they open their laptops.
Part of the appeal of remote work is having choices.
A café can be ideal for an hour of email. A coworking space can provide community and professional infrastructure. Airport lounges make travel days more manageable. Libraries, hotel lobbies and other public spaces can all become useful places to work under the right circumstances.
The important question is what someone actually needs to accomplish.
A person taking back-to-back calls needs something different from someone clearing an inbox. Someone preparing for an important presentation may value solitude more than atmosphere. A traveller with one hour to spare has different requirements from someone who needs four uninterrupted hours before an evening commitment.
Work from anywhere becomes considerably more useful when “anywhere” means having a range of appropriate options rather than making whatever chair happens to be available work.
The first phase of remote work proved that many professionals did not need to be in the same office every day to do their jobs.
What comes next may have less to do with escaping the office and more to do with creating a better ecosystem outside it.
Some of that infrastructure will be purpose-built. Coworking spaces are an obvious example. But much of it already exists in hotels, hospitality venues and other spaces that were traditionally designed around different patterns of use.
Making those spaces more flexible can matter particularly in cities where work, travel and everyday life increasingly overlap. Someone does not necessarily need a permanent desk simply because they need a professional workspace for the next three hours.
The laptop made work portable. The places around it are beginning to catch up.
The scale of location-independent work reflects how established this behaviour has become. MBO Partners’ 2025 research on digital nomads found that 18.5 million American workers identified as digital nomads, an increase of 153% since 2019.
But the ability to work almost anywhere has exposed a less glamorous problem: not everywhere is actually a good place to work.
The Laptop Was the Easy Part
Technology solved much of the mobility problem remarkably quickly. Cloud software, video conferencing, messaging platforms and mobile connectivity have made it possible for many jobs to travel wherever the worker goes.
The physical workspace has been harder to replace.
A coffee shop might be perfectly adequate for answering emails but less useful for a confidential client call. An airport lounge can make a long connection more productive, but announcements and foot traffic do not disappear because someone has a deadline. A hotel lobby might be comfortable for catching up on messages, while several hours of focused work can require something quieter and more private.
Coworking spaces have filled part of that gap, particularly for people staying in one place for longer periods. Yet they are not always where someone happens to need them, and the needs of a traveller with four free hours can be very different from those of a remote worker settling into a city for a month.
The freedom to work from anywhere creates a second question: where can you actually work well?
Different Work Requires Different Space
Remote work is often discussed as though it were a single activity. A typical workday suggests otherwise.
Answering messages might require little more than Wi-Fi and a chair. Preparing a presentation may require several uninterrupted hours. Video calls introduce questions about background noise and privacy. Creative or analytical work can become considerably harder when conversations, music and people moving through a public space are constantly competing for attention.
Research into workplace design supports the idea that the environment matters. One study examining cognitive performance across different workplace settings found that performance improved when workers moved from an open-plan area into quieter zones and individual rooms, reinforcing the importance of quiet spaces for concentration.
Then there are the practical requirements that rarely appear in the romantic version of working while travelling: keeping devices charged, sitting comfortably for several hours, taking a call without broadcasting it to everyone nearby and trusting the internet connection when an important meeting begins.
There is no universally perfect remote workspace because there is no universally identical workday.
Travel Makes the Workspace Problem More Obvious
At home, most remote workers eventually establish some kind of routine. They know where they can take a call, where they can concentrate and what they need to get through the day.
Travel removes much of that predictability.
Someone might finish a morning meeting several hours before an evening train. A traveller extending a weekend could need to work on Monday before heading home that night. A freelancer moving between accommodations can find themselves with a substantial gap between checkout and the next place they can settle in.
Even leisure travel increasingly overlaps with work. An important call does not necessarily respect a sightseeing itinerary, just as a deadline does not disappear because someone has a flight later that evening.
Those situations do not always require another night of accommodation. Often, what is missing is much simpler: a reliable place to work for part of the day.
Hotels Already Have Much of the Infrastructure
Hotels are an interesting part of this changing workspace because they were never designed exclusively for sleeping.
Business travellers have worked from hotel rooms for decades. Lobbies and lounges have long doubled as informal meeting places. Many larger hotels already have Wi-Fi, desks, seating areas and business facilities because their guests expect to work while travelling.
The difference is that someone who needs those things for a few hours does not necessarily need somewhere to sleep that night.
Hotels are another option, particularly when privacy or several uninterrupted hours matter. A look at day use hotels in London available through HotelsByDay.com turns up hotels including the Hilton London Bankside, The Royal Horseguards Hotel and Leonardo Royal Hotel London Tower Bridge, all examples of properties where a traveller can move beyond the coffee-shop setup and work from a private room for the day.
That can be useful when the work itself calls for more privacy. Someone joining a video call has different requirements from someone answering emails over coffee, and neither necessarily needs a room for the night.
The same principle extends beyond London. As work becomes more mobile, the usefulness of a space increasingly depends on whether it is available when someone actually needs it.
Sometimes Public Space Is Enough
None of this means remote workers suddenly need hotel rooms every time they open their laptops.
Part of the appeal of remote work is having choices.
A café can be ideal for an hour of email. A coworking space can provide community and professional infrastructure. Airport lounges make travel days more manageable. Libraries, hotel lobbies and other public spaces can all become useful places to work under the right circumstances.
The important question is what someone actually needs to accomplish.
A person taking back-to-back calls needs something different from someone clearing an inbox. Someone preparing for an important presentation may value solitude more than atmosphere. A traveller with one hour to spare has different requirements from someone who needs four uninterrupted hours before an evening commitment.
Work from anywhere becomes considerably more useful when “anywhere” means having a range of appropriate options rather than making whatever chair happens to be available work.
Flexibility Is Becoming Part of the Infrastructure
The first phase of remote work proved that many professionals did not need to be in the same office every day to do their jobs.
What comes next may have less to do with escaping the office and more to do with creating a better ecosystem outside it.
Some of that infrastructure will be purpose-built. Coworking spaces are an obvious example. But much of it already exists in hotels, hospitality venues and other spaces that were traditionally designed around different patterns of use.
Making those spaces more flexible can matter particularly in cities where work, travel and everyday life increasingly overlap. Someone does not necessarily need a permanent desk simply because they need a professional workspace for the next three hours.
The laptop made work portable. The places around it are beginning to catch up.
Working from anywhere was the first promise. Finding somewhere worth working once you get there may be the more important one! (Photo credit: Aleh Tsikhanau)
