Aruba Is Inviting People Who Work From Home to Work From The Beach Instead

If you’ve spent the last six months staring at the same patch of wall in your makeshift home office, you might be entertaining fantasies about working from a sparkling, sunny beach instead. Aruba wants to help you bring those fantasies to life.

As Travel + Leisure reports, the Aruba Tourism Authority has launched “One Happy Workation,” a program encouraging people to work remotely from the Caribbean island for as long as three months (though there is a possibility the time limit will get extended). Basically, the organization is offering discounted deals on accommodations to make a long-term stay more affordable. As for what exactly that stay looks like, it’s completely up to you. If you’re interested in a traditional vacation experience, you can opt for a hotel or an all-inclusive resort; or, if you’re hoping to really make yourself at home, there are plenty of private villas, condos, and townhouses to choose from.

While specific amenities and activities—snorkeling, local mixology courses, and grocery delivery, to name just a few—vary by residence, every place is equipped with Wi-Fi, so you can submit reports and send emails from the sunniest corner of your temporary abode. That said, you’re not obligated to stay inside while you work; there are also free Wi-Fi zones around the island. In fact, you don’t actually have to work at all—feel free to leave your laptop at home and take that long-awaited sabbatical.

Since you’d technically still be considered a visitor, you won’t be permitted to work for any Aruban company (unless you secure a work or business permit). And although you won’t need a visa to enter the country, you will need negative COVID-19 test results. When and where you can take that test depends on where you’re coming from. Visitors arriving from some states are allowed to take a test as soon as they land in Aruba, while others must test negative within three days of departing home.

If three months isn’t quite long enough to satisfy all your work-from-beach hopes and dreams, Barbados’s special 12-month visa might be an even better fit.