Creator Cabins: The Future of Remote Work

Brian Chesky, the CEO of AirBnB, was recently quoted as saying that 24% of all rentals on the platform are longer than 28 days. In the travel industry, 28 days is the metric used for what counts as a vacation versus a long-term stay. It affects how rentals are taxed, but also what they mean.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been living in the Texas Hill Country. My friend, Jonathan Hillis, built a cabin out here that is like a mix between an AirBnB and a co-working space. It was a gamble, but Chesky’s comments from AirBnB’s earnings call confirms Jonathan’s hunch: remote work will lead to, well, people wanting to work remotely.

Working and Living Remotely

The conversation around remote work for the last year has been dominated by this idea that people will work from a home office setup while the archetype of remote work is the digital nomad calling in from somewhere new each week. Either you’re holed up at home or a free bird whisking around the world. Does remote work have to be a choice between these two extremes? Why not use the freedom that comes with being remote to mix work and travel?

When you’re working towards a big deadline, find a place where you can focus but not be in your apartment at the end of a long workday. Spend the summer with your kids working from the Smokey Mountains. Study for your finals from a cheap spot near the beach in Florida.

These can be temporary and short- to mid-term stays or it can be a permanent lifestyle of hopping from place to place on our own timeline.

The Cabins

There are a couple of challenges that hold people back from doing this. How many AirBnBs have you stayed in that had a comfortable work area? How many had a drawer full of extra chargers, dongles, and cables? Or a whiteboard? Or extra office supplies?

How many co-working spaces have you worked in that were set in a beautiful location, not far from a major city, and less than 5 minutes from a state or national park?

Creator Cabins has all of this.

Forty-five minutes after you first unlock your rental car at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, you’ll be deep in the Texas Hill Country scrolling through snapping pictures of the gorgeous sunsets for Instagram before turning in for the night on a memory foam bed. Creator Cabins is so remote, the only thing you hear outside is birds chirping and wind through the Juniper trees. Your Zoom calls will be crystal clear though because the property has 100 mb per second wifi.

If you want a cafe-vibe to work in, the common area has a couple of comfortable work spots. Or the work areas in each bedroom are a comfortable place to crank through work in silence. You can break up your day by taking calls outside on one of the decks. End your work day with a dip in the stock-tank pool. Or wake up early for a hike in the nearby state park before your first call starts.

Why not both?

Moving from place to place and living out of a backpack never really appealed to me. Nor did living from a suitcase and traveling the world long-term. I do enjoy working from home. But as the last year has shown me, I don’t want to work from the desk in my one-bedroom apartment for ever.

So maybe it’s not a choice between two extremes. Maybe you can have both: remote work and remote life when you want.