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Coworking news & views.
🇩🇪 Summary of the 3-day COWORK2023 conference #
Kristina Schneider shared a quick summary of the COWORK2023 conference by the German Coworking Federation. In short: more participants than ever, more participation from coworking tech companies and saw initial results from coworking survey showing more economic sustainability.
👉 Read this.
🇪🇺 The why, when, how and where of European Coworking Day #
A post exploring the significance of European Coworking Day (10 May), the benefits of getting involved, how to make the most of this exciting new holiday, and why a new date (alongside International Coworking Day on 9 August) is neccessary to celebrate coworking in Europe.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🤖 Popular AI chatbot gets booking capabilities #
Florian Huber shares a quick example of how the addition of plugins into ChatGPT can take their millions of users from planning, to booking, reserving and more.
Curious how AI (and plugins like these) may impact your flex space business revenues? If you’ve been following TWIC or joined any of our recap discussions, you’ll know I’ve done a deep dive and working on a report just for you. Watch your inboxes.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
🇺🇸 5,612 coworking spaces in the US, spanning 113M sqft. #
Researchers at CoworkingCafe leveraged proprietary data from Yardi in March to break down the coworking space stock availability in the 25 largest markets, as well as their size and distribution.
Main takeaways: 5,612 coworking locations across the US. 5 markets have over 200 spaces – Manhattan (290), LA (265), Washington DC (243), Chicago (235) and Dallas-Forth Worth (225). Total allocated square footage adds up to 113M sqft (1.67% of total square footage of office space in the US). National median prices are $134 (hotdesks), $326 (dedicated desks) and $94 (virtual offices).
👉 Read this.
😳 81% of US office workers are frustrated with their current office experiences #
Kurt Patrick shares essensys’ latest results from a survey of 1000 US office workers about their office experiences, and how landlords (and flex space providers) need to offer more than amenities to keep workers happily coming in ‘to the office’.
Key takeaways: Only 1 in 5 admit that amenities are what brings them to the office, where 63% claim tech and flex workspaces are why they do come in. Interestingly they share that 52% of workers are envious of the tech available in other office buildings aside their own.
👉 Read this.
📉 SF and Manhattan see over 10% drop in office rents #
Matt Phillips shares some data looking at the change in office rents on signed leases between 2019 and 2022. SF (-30.8%), Manhattan (-13.6%) and Philadelphia (-6.5%) are the hardest hit with regions like Charlotte (+5.7%), Releigh (+5.6%) and Boston (+4.6%) seeing growing rents.
Time will show how this will affect landlords, REITs, CRE capital markets, local banks and the large coworking markets in these regions
👉 Read this.
🔽 Millions of Americans stopped working remotely in 2022 #
The Hill shares data from a Labor Department report in which they note that 72% of private-sector businesses reported ‘little to no telework’ among their workers in Aug-Sep ’22, compared to ~60% in Jul-Sep ’21. However the percentage of employers who reported that all their employees ‘were teleworking’ did jump 1% in 2022 from 2021, to 11%.
As for the hybrid crowd? 16% reported they had some employees were working ‘from home’, compared to 30% in 2021.
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🇺🇸 Work-focussed members club expands into Nashville #
Charlie Robinson shares that The Malin is expanding into Nashville, as their first step in expanding across more cities outside NYC. The expansion is in partnership with AJ Capital Partners and will feature a 16k sqft offering including 7 private offices, 48 dedicated desks, 5 meeting rooms, 2 libraries, a kitchen and private terrace.
👉 Read this.
🫤 Merged entity gets ‘new’ name and puts major stake up for sale #
Sky News shares a twofer of a story about the whole IWG+Instant merger-y thing we’ve been tracking for a while.
- The combined entity is rebrand(ed/ing) to Worka. Why’s this odd? It’s not been announced anywhere, and Worka was the name of IWG’s own ‘booking app’.
- IWG have opened a data room for potential buyers of a 50% share of the combined digital ops entity.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jamie Orr shares how they (finally) managed to expand their CoWork Tahoe coworking concept with Jamie Russo on the Everything Coworking podcast.
Sneh Kadakia shares how from HERE rose from the literal ashes of her first workspace after a fire that took out 16 businesses and displaced 20 residents with Liz Elam on the GCUC podcast.
📆 Coworking events.
Discuss this newsletter #
31 March: Discuss this newsletter, with other readers and industry leaders.
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Coworking Convo: Hospitality as a Service #
31 March: Service normally refers to an intangible product that is offered to members. Hospitality is an interaction and refers to the way you treat your members. How can hospitality and service be bridged to better serve our communities?
Let’s chat about it.
👉 Read this.