This was a big week for Jabbrbox as they shared the news they now have locations inside Chicago O’Hare International Airport. For those travelers that don’t have access to an airline lounge, they can now pre-book or walk up and recharge or get focus inside their private, connected workspaces

Chicago O’Hare sees 83M passengers a year — that’s a lot of potential customers for IWG/Regus the partner behind this Jabbrbox expansion strategy. But with great opportunity comes a lot of work and waiting. Jabbrbox’s co-founder shared in a separate post that this launch is the result of 9 years of work to secure the space within ORD. Congrats to them!

A while back there was talk of a pending deal between IWG and Jabbrrbox and we’ve now gotten all the specifics on this partnership. The two have formed a partnership to install 3,750 privacy pod units across various public spaces over the next three years. The collaboration will deploy both single-user pods and four-person, wheelchair-accessible pods in locations including airports, train stations, retail centers, and corporate buildings, incorporating IWG’s Regus-branded flexible workspace design.

This strategic partnership extends IWG’s portfolio while addressing the growing demand for hybrid work solutions, with Jabbrrbox co-founders Brian Hackathorn and Jeremy Jennings emphasizing that the initiative will deliver accessible workspaces where professionals need them most.

The WSJ digs into the trend about PAYG or app-based workspace access in airports. Although we’ve been following this topic for a while here on TWIC, there is one chain I hadn’t covered yet, and that may be because their PAYG office setup is kind of a secondary ‘thing’.

Minute Suites started as a chain of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) places to sleep at 10 US airports. However through a partnership with the Priority Pass network, they’re now pivoting to focus on letting their members work at PAYG locations.

Business Traveler looks into the growing trend of remote workers holding meetings on the go from newly designed terminals and lounges. They note that the number of flex workspaces within airports has grown 100% year-on-year since 2021 (via CoworkIntel), that Jabbrbox is growing, and that the operator of Priority Pass shared that "working space to plug in and focus" was one of the top choices of what travelers are willing to pay for.

Just like retail bringing in flex workspaces, increased footfall that hangs out for a little longer can mean big spikes in long-term revenues of surrounding retailers, and therefor chargeable rents. Makes sense to me.