The office wants to be a hotel. It forgot the rooms.

Better coffee, comfortable lounges, signature scents. Offices are taking cues from hospitality, and there’s plenty to like. But hotels offer something many offices still lack: a private place to retreat.

Our article on the Bureau blog explores what the “hotelification” trend keeps leaving out.

The setup: San Francisco’s 88 Spear takes the idea to “work resort” scale. The $100 million redevelopment includes a sauna, cold plunge, IV therapy rooms, a rooftop restaurant and a golf simulator.

Zoom in: Elsewhere, workers are still searching for somewhere to concentrate. Gensler’s 2026 survey of more than 16,000 office workers found people using meeting rooms for solo work and taking calls in hallways.

• A University of Sydney-led study of 349 people across 28 open-plan offices points to what’s missing: lack of privacy predicted dissatisfaction with office acoustics more strongly than noise did.

The distinction: A hotel gives you both a lobby and a room. You can spend time with other people, then close a door when you need privacy. The Do Not Disturb sign makes that choice ordinary. Nobody questions whether you’re being a team player.

Why it matters: Hospitality has useful lessons for the workplace. Making people comfortable includes giving them somewhere to take a sensitive call, work through a difficult problem or think without interruption. Those spaces deserve as much care as the lounge.