[lesdeuxmagots]

They're staying near the domain area, which seems an incredibly reasonable. Relatively accessible via multiple freeways from population centers and the airport, close to many other tech campuses. Larger tech campuses optimize for those sorts of factors far more than where people want to hang out.

[harmmonica]

Reasonable absolutely. Convenient, sensible for employees easily being able to get to work. Airport is not close considering it's on the opposite side of the city, but, sure, close enough.

That said, I genuinely find it interesting that they would put a hotel in that location because of a lack of amenities and interesting things to explore (I'm betraying my attitude about the domain and that area in general, but I would not call it interesting/enjoyable/fun to explore unless you like mega malls and top golf, which some folks do, but people visiting from out of town likely would not when they can just as easily get that back home). Maybe they were even debating whether to include the hotel at all until Covid came along and made the decision for them--the suburbs are the new city centers (btw, I realize they're in the city technically).

[ghaff]

Usually when I'm visiting a company it's a long day (or days) of meetings followed by business dinners. I'm as much for exploring new areas as anyone but the last thing I want to do at the end of such a day is take a drive into a not-so-close city.

I used to work for someone who would drive a number of us a bit crazy because he always wanted to do team meeting dinners in the city about an hour from the office where we would meet during the day--which was actually the wrong direction from where many of us lived. (He, somewhat understandably, wasn't crazy about the dining options near the office.)

[_bxg1]

I assume it's a simple matter of real-estate price. There's lots of empty land in the area, and we all know how expensive stuff has gotten towards downtown. Also, many of the stodgier/enterprise-y big tech companies are up north (Dell, HP, GM, Oracle, etc.) which I assume is at least partly due to proximity to the suburbs. Older employees probably care more about that than exploring.

[flatiron]

I am a contractor that works for Apple (specifically the Austin campus and live on the East coast) and always stay at the domain when I go. I’ve had a few times people convinced me to stay downtown but it’s really not worth the hassle. That being said the hotels at the domain are nice and the lyft drivers know the Apple campus very well.

[ghaff]

Until relatively recently, there were few sizable tech companies in cities at all. This is true in Silicon Valley, Boston, NYC, etc. My company did add a small Boston office but that was primarily for the convenience of visiting executives from other companies as well as a couple other things that benefit from being in the city rather than an hour outside.