Are Your Hours of Operations Hindering Your Workspace Revenue Potential?

Published on March 6, 2017 - By Cecilia Amador de San José

Two week ago, Davinci Virtual Office Solutions released their annual report “2017 State of Workspace and Communication Services”.

The report takes a deep look into workspace and services utilization, patterns, and market opportunities.

“The global landscape for workspace offerings is vast, and it continues to expand. Providers vary in shape and size, in addition to the type of workspaces and meeting rooms that are available.” Coworking spaces, meeting venues, business centers, virtual offices, and all other flexible workspace solutions all tally “to over 100,000 meeting, coworking, or work spaces; accounting for more than an estimated $65 billion in annual revenue.”

And what if we told you that that revenue could increase significantly by simply adjusting and extending your workspace (of any kind) and meeting room hours?

We’ve been saying it for a while, and we will say it again: meeting rooms are a workspace’s most profitable asset.

Meeting room offerings vary by size and by type: small conference rooms, large conference rooms, medium conference rooms, board rooms, and training rooms. But regardless of that, the booking process for most of these tends to be similar, at least from the client’s point-of-view.

According to Davinci’s report, “nearly one-third of customers take between two and seven days to deliberate and make (the) final decision to purchase. A slightly smaller number take over eight days. Those deciding on the same day or next day comprise almost 40 percent of customers.”

These numbers are for those customers who actually book a workspace or meeting room. But what about the rest? What about the deals that don’t come through?

According to Davinci’s research, “there are numerous reasons why customers opt not to book a workspace or meeting room. Some factors are beyond the control of the workspace and meeting room provider, such as a customer lacking a specific date or simply shopping around.”

However, in other instances, “factors provide actionable intelligence used to generate additional revenue streams,” from the part of workspace and meeting room providers.

The report found that “the second most frequently cited reason for not booking (a meeting room or workspace) is the unavailability of weekend hours. The fourth most frequently cited reason is the unavailability of after hours on weekdays.”

In other words, if you want to increase your bookings and your revenue, you should seriously consider extending your business hours or offering a flexible solution to suit those who need occasional after-hours access.

“By changing hours of operations, workspace and meeting room operators could increase their revenues by 10 to 20 percent and their margins, comparably.”

Additional findings

Adding to the potential the untapped market of extended and weekend hour poses, the report also found the following:

Business centers that offer flexible hybrid models (combination of private and shared workspace) generated over $21 billion in revenue in 2016.
One in four coworking space providers fail to generate a profit.
The profit margins for virtual offices and meeting spaces are much higher than workspace profit margins.
Legal is the top industry segment when it comes to meeting room and workspace bookings. However, professional services are the ones that repeatedly book meeting rooms the most.

You can download the full report here.