WERC Global 2026 reinforced a clear message for employers: accommodations are part of talent deployment strategy, not simply a transaction in the overall relocation process. For Dwellworks Living by CORT, that puts flexible housing, employee experience, and coordinated partner support at the center of the conversation. The relocation and talent mobility industry’s largest conference of the year recently wrapped up in Chicago, drawing 1,600 registrants from over 35 countries and representing the global talent mobility needs of multinational corporations, SMBs, and rapidly growing new enterprises.
Dwellworks Living by CORT brought executive, supply chain, sales, and account management perspectives to these discussions. Our team included executive leaders Mike Davis, Jeff Rowe and James Conigliaro; North American supply chain leader Genna Neibauer; and members of our global sales and account management organization, including myself and my APAC colleague Dima Lorenz. Together, those functions connect the strategic questions raised at WERC with the practical requirements of sourcing accommodations and supporting clients and guests.
The Depth and Reach of the Mobility Industry is a Strategic Asset for Business
A key purpose of this year’s conference, as shared by WERC Global President and CEO Anupam Singhal, was to level-set the size of the global mobility industry and how the depth and reach of the industry contributes to and facilitates global business growth and value creation.
Highlights from the industry’s inaugural Global Market Size and U.S. Economic Impact study included these key facts:
- Approximately $90 billion in annual global talent mobility spending, supporting 8.7 million employment-related moves each year.
- Nearly 340,000 U.S. jobs supported across the mobility ecosystem, including real estate, temporary living, transportation, immigration, and local services.
- $7bn tax revenue contribution in the US alone
This first-of-its-kind impact report gives global mobility services and travel management leaders an industry-wide foundation for explaining the role of professionally managed mobility in talent-led business growth. The findings establish the scale and interconnectedness of the ecosystem; the case for any accommodation partner then depends on how its expertise and resources address a client’s needs.
To learn more about the industry serving global talent mobility and the WERC Inaugural Talent Mobility Market Sizing and Economic Impact Survey, see the Market Size and Economic Impact Report.
The participation of Dwellworks Living by CORT’s Senior Vice President James Conigliaro in “Nudge the Network: Driving Smarter, Sustainable Decisions in Global Mobility” connected the conference agenda with a practical accommodation challenge: making sustainability part of everyday choices in terms of property appeal and guest decisions. The approach is to identify supplier sustainability features and make those options visible alongside the customer’s other requirements. That connects supplier engagement, earned opportunity, informed guest choice, and business needs rather than treating sustainability as a separate conversation.
An Accelerated Expectation for Solutions Capabilities
In over 50 education sessions, workshops, corporate and supplier roundtables, and supplier network updates hosted by relocation management companies (RMCs), topics focused on strategic workforce planning, responsiveness, adaptability, and aligning talent deployment execution more directly with the achievement of corporate goals. These themes appeared repeatedly across workforce strategy discussions and mobility transformation sessions.
Another recurring discussion was the widening variety of mobility use cases. Corporate housing still provides a bridge between temporary living and permanent housing, but that is no longer its only role. Global businesses also need accommodations that fit different assignment purposes and durations. For accommodation partners, the task is to match the housgin solution to the work being done, including:
- Project work
- Training programs
- Extended travel
- Internships
- Rotational assignments for global teams
AI was both an implied and explicit factor at the conference. As businesses integrate AI with appropriate controls and risk management, expectations are rising for mobility solutions that are flexible, transparent, customized, personal, cost efficient, and consistently high quality worldwide. At Dwellworks Living by CORT, the relevant test is how technology supports accommodation decisions and service—not whether a process can be labeled AI-enabled. Technology is a means to improve execution; personal support and accountability remain central to the customer experience.
Customer Experience has taken on new depth of meaning. Experience is no longer defined by feedback on a survey after the fact. Customer experience is defined by continuous engagement and personal communication. In a world where AI is expected to create operational efficiencies to control cost and accelerate execution, clients and guests also expect more personalized and customer-aware service. The benchmark is not meeting needs defined by policy, it is consumer-grade customer service and all that entails.
As one major relocation management company summarized the expectations of their corporate clients: they are demanding greater speed, transparency, predictive insights, and technology-enabled solutions, while continuing to value strong service delivery and proactive communication. Dwellworks Living by CORT is ahead of this analytics and information curve with our client information portal and quarterly market reports. Read our latest global market updates here.
Why Accommodations Solutions Are Essential to Talent Deployment
CHPA, the Corporate Housing Providers Association (chpaonline.org), hosted a preconference summit at WERC Global 2026 on the current state and emerging priorities and opportunities for corporate housing. The summit theme was Corporate Housing – from Transactional to Transformational and reinforced the strongest message affecting temporary accommodation providers, which is that corporate buyers increasingly want partners that solve workforce challenges, not suppliers who simply source inventory.
The CHPA-sponsored session brought together voices from across the corporate housing ecosystem for a focused, practical conversation about what is needed to build stronger partnerships and better outcomes.
The four core themes shaping the future of corporate housing and mobility were defined as
• Balancing cost, speed, and quality in a constrained market.
• Strengthening service recovery and escalation management.
• Using data and the metrics that matter most to support better decision
• Elevating supplier relationships into strategic partnerships.
The summit’s emphasis on decision-useful data has a practical connection to our quarterly market reporting. Dwellworks Living by CORT’s Q4 2026 pricing reports draw on confirmed bookings through our proprietary Market Rate Indicator. These rolling twelve-month rate benchmarks give buyers a starting point for accommodation planning, rather than a guarantee of price or availability. They help turn a general conversation about cost and supply into a destination-specific discussion of options and trade-offs.
Connecting Dwellworks Living by CORT’s Capabilities to Mobility Priorities
The discussions across the WERC Global 2026 sessions, from formal presentations to hallway conversations with dozens of global mobility program leaders and travel program managers identified that the best answers for global accommodations will come from the partners and providers whose offerings include a full range of solutions, including:
- serviced apartments
- extended stay hotels
- alternative lodging
- furniture solutions
- meaningful sustainability
- destination services
Dwellworks Living by CORT brings together temporary living expertise with CORT’s broader mobility resources and capabilities to support organizations and their people wherever work takes them. Through The CORT Global Network, trusted furniture rental partners around the world provide local market knowledge, expertise, and furnishing solutions, while Dwellworks Living by CORT brings an extensive global network of temporary living and corporate housing providers. Working alongside relocation management companies and destination service organizations such as Dwellworks, this combination reflects many of the priorities discussed at WERC: broader accommodation choice, coordinated support, local expertise, and strong partnerships that help connect housing and furnishing needs with the employee’s broader relocation journey.
A summary of expectations and expected solutions includes:
- Temporary accommodation to support talent deployment. Corporate housing is increasingly viewed as a component of workforce strategy, not simply relocation logistics.
- Employee experience matters as much as inventory. Corporations want accommodation solutions that support employees in settling faster, becoming productive sooner, and staying connected and engaged with their projects and assignments. Those objectives make the fit between accommodation, assignment duration, and personal needs important; the core driver is no longer simply whether inventory is available.
- The winning model is ecosystem-based. Global mobility buyers increasingly value accommodation, destination services, and local partners coordinated within a single managed experience. For Dwellworks Living by CORT, the opportunity is to connect accommodation sourcing with that wider partner ecosystem, so clients and employees experience a coordinated transition rather than a series of disconnected transactions.
If your mobility or travel program is adapting to project work, training, extended travel, internships, or rotational assignments, let’s discuss the accommodation options, employee support, and partner coordination that those needs require. Contact me at [email protected] to explore how Dwellworks Living by CORT can align accommodation execution with your talent deployment strategy.
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