Culver City is fast establishing itself as one of Southern California’s most appealing destinations for blended business and leisure travel, as a new generation of corporate guests looks to fold a little downtime into their working trips.
The shift reflects a wider industry trend. Bleisure, the practice of extending a work trip to take in the destination, has moved from novelty to norm. The Global Business Travel Association has found that the majority of business travellers now add personal leisure days to their work trips, and analysts expect the global bleisure market to more than quadruple over the coming decade. For UK travellers heading to Los Angeles, that growing appetite to mix productivity with pleasure is reshaping where they choose to stay.
One property leaning into the change is The Shay, a Destination by Hyatt. Set within Culver City’s thriving Ivy Station development and a short distance from major entertainment and creative-industry employers, including Sony Pictures Studios, Amazon MGM Studios and a cluster of production companies, The Shay positions itself as a natural base for executives, creatives and business travellers visiting the city.
Its lobby, affectionately dubbed “the Living Room of Los Angeles”, doubles as an informal coworking space, with generous seating, plentiful power outlets and artwork from local makers, an environment intended to mirror the neighbourhood’s creative energy. It is the kind of setting that speaks to a broader push across the sector to make business travel time more productive rather than merely tolerable.
For corporate groups, the hotel offers more than 8,000 square feet of flexible indoor and outdoor meeting and event space. From boardroom sessions and team retreats to networking receptions and company celebrations, venues including the Ivy Ballroom, the Ivy Courtyard, rooftop spaces and private meeting rooms are designed to let guests move easily between work and downtime across a single stay.
Away from the meeting room, The Shay balances graft and relaxation with a rooftop pool deck overlooking the city, a 24-hour fitness centre, a games room and a series of social spaces built to encourage connection and creativity. The property also sits within easy reach of mixed-use developments such as The Platform and Ivy Station, opening up some of Los Angeles’s most talked-about dining, shopping and cultural experiences.
Roughly 20 minutes from LAX and linked to the Metro transit network, The Shay offers convenient access across Los Angeles while delivering the walkable, community-led experience that has helped cement Culver City’s reputation as a leading bleisure destination. For the modern traveller weighing up where to extend a Los Angeles work trip, the neighbourhood, and properties like this one, increasingly make the case for staying a little longer.
