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📰 Coworking news & views.
🎸 A lot more background on Jamie Hodari’s coworking story #
Neil Mehta takes us behind the scenes in this WSJ profile on Jamie Hodari. The piece pins Jamie up as the opposite of Adam Neumman, compares Industrious‘ management-agreement model vs WeWork‘s rent-arbitrage one, but also highlights a few things I (as a self-declared flex space geek) didn’t know. For example, that Jamie was on his way to becoming a anthropology professor (and a night out helped him avoid that), then a lawyer, through a hedge fund and into co-founding an experimental hybrid university (Jamie more info on this please).
Loads of background here, and an interesting read for sure. Two quick notes though: 1. I think there’s so much more to Jamie and Industrious than being the ‘anti-‘ anyone or any brand. And 2. friends don’t let friends hyphenate coworking.
👉 Read this.
🥰 The best pieces of marketing come from your members #
This post from Ryan Gorman about how their membership (at The Residence) supports their team and business, is a glowing example of how/why referrals are the strongest sources of great leads for coworking spaces.
At time of curation, this post has 70+ reactions, and I can imagine getting strong reach with other local businesses directly or indirectly connected to Ryan.
👉 Read this.
🍻 Are you now competing with local pubs/bars too?! #
Haley Egusquiza shares a photo of a local pub called Brewhouse & Kitchen promoting "work spaces available" for remote workers and freelancers, offering lunch and unlimited coffee for £10 (around $13).
We’ve seen a number of platforms trying to make spaces like this bookable, but could we be seeing more pubs, restaurants, etc going directly to the market like this?
👉 Read this.
🏨 Hotel giant adds apartment rental concept brand #
Marriott and Sonder have announced a partnership in conjunction with a separate deal securing additional liquidity for the apartment style hotel brand. 9,000 units will be added to the Marriott portfolio in a license under the newly created "Sonder by Marriott Bonvoy" brand.
The world’s largest hotel company finds a way to boost year over year unit growth while the apartment style hotel concept gets access to a massive pipeline of customers and a vote in confidence that travelers are looking for more Airbnb alternatives: Residential locations or style without the headaches of overbearing hosts or expensive cleaning fees. Although not strictly workspace related, it does make us wonder if given other stories this week, we could see more M&A interest from hotels for coworking brands too – or the inclusion of such spaces into travel reward point programs.
👉 Read this.
🏨 How hotels are generating new revenue via paying non-guests. #
HotelsMag dives into how hotels are finding new revenue channels via customers who don’t have room reservations. This includes providing access to guest amenities like pools, cabanas, parking, fitness centers, events, workspaces and meeting rooms through day passes or memberships.
This isn’t technically a brand new trend, but better integrations with hotel management systems are providing better pass and membership experiences, which puts these kinds of spaces directly in competition with other nearby providers of meeting rooms and workspaces. We couldn’t really expect the whole "hotelification of office spaces" not to entice hoteliers to explore "flexifying their hotels", right?!
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
😣 How to untangle Google Calendar issues #
Syncaroo created a guide to help workspace teams quickly get the bottom of issues when using Google Calendars for meeting room or other on-demand bookings.
If you’ve ever run into the issue of having rogue events pop into your calendar and blocking member access to resources, this s how to find out where they’re coming from, and how to fix the issue. If not, but you are using Google Calendar integrations anywhere, then it’s probably a good idea to save this guide somewhere – just in case something goes wrong and you need to quickly tackle the issue.
👉 Read this.
🇳🇿 Local discovery and booking platform hits 500k visitors #
Sharedspace announced that they’ve surpassed the milestone of 500,000 annual visitors to their website. That’s half a million people looking for (and hopefully booking) shared spaces through this platform.
👉 Read this.
📹 Touch free door access and camera system integrate #
Accessia shared a video about their new integration with Eagle Eye to tie video surveillance footage to door and access events.
We’re seeing more and more integrations that seamlessly improve the security and monitoring of coworking and shared spaces. Are you using both video and door access in your space? If not, why not?
👉 Read this.
🤑 Could automating doors actually improve your profitability!? #
Vera Eftimovska over at Kisi shares a very interesting 15min read into the benefits of automating access control, focussing on operational cost savings doing so presents, and even explores some additional revenue streams these automations can create.
I love these kinds of deeper-dive posts, looking first at the challenges, the benefits of automations and then looking at how to do cost/benefit calculations. They even share a free ROI calculator, no email gate or anything. Nice!
👉 Read this.
📈 Coworking data.
🇦🇺 Australia sees a 3.2% dip in flex space prices #
Rubberdesk share that they’re seeing a notable shift in pricing. Following 2 years of consistent growth, the national median rates fell 3.3% in Q3 to $665/desk/month.
Even though they note that supply is declining (down 4.2% to 146.8k sqft), less demand is lowering average prices. Locally Canberra saw the highest drop at 7.4% to $500, followed by Sydney (down 6.2% to $938). Melbourne dipped 4.5% to $745 while Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide held steady between $600 and $700.
👉 Read this.
🤝 Coworking market moves.
🇦🇺 National operator partners with network of off-grid cabins #
Hub Australia share a new partnership with Unyoked (a company that runs 100 luxury off-grid cabins around the world), aimed to help members ‘switch off’ and reconnect with nature.
Rebekah Murphy, the firm’s Chief Experience Officer, notes that more and more employees expect their employers to provide wellness and wellbeing support, so this partnership is one of many ways the network supports the health and wellbeing of their members. The partnership not only pulls in Unyoked’s expertise in stress relief into Hub’s workspaces, gives all members a 20% discount on cabins, but also gives the network 186 free nights that they’ll be using to run member support programs.
👉 Read this.
🇩🇪 Local space partners with meeting-room-on-wheels startup #
Engelnest Coworking share that they’ve formed a partnership with TINY SPACE, a Berlin-based startup that sets up and runs mobile meeting rooms. (And by mobile, I mean that they are on actual wheels).
The partnership enables the booking of personal work "retreats" for up to 5 people, wherever the meeting rooms are currently located – from city centers, to events, to the countryside.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 An interesting approach to running a multi-let office building #
Adam Egan shares a first look at The Jellicoe, the multi-let concept pulled together by Fora and Related Argent that combines flex space options with more traditional leases.
👉 Read this.
🇳🇱 Amsterdam based brand adds a new location #
StartDock announces their sixth location to be opened in the former official residence of the mayor, in the iconic Keizersgracht area in the center of Amsterdam.
👉 Read this.
🇪🇸 New coliving and work cafe brand launches near Barcelona #
Vanessa Sans shares that Kalima, their new coliving and work café brand has launched just 45 minutes from Barcelona (and 6 seconds from the beach).
Seeing more and more mentions of "work cafés". This is the second in this week’s newsletter alone.
👉 Read this.
🏦 Another bank expands flex workspace product #
Jonathan Weinbrenn from BE.Spoke shares a photo from an upcoming Work Café from Santander bank coming to Cheapside in London.
This follows moves from banks like Capital One, Virgin Money and a few others who are exploring work cafés and spaces.
👉 Read this.
🇭🇰 APAC brand expands to new location in Hong Kong #
Samantha Wordsworth shares that the Hive (part of The Flexi Group) are expanding with a new location in the Po Hing Fong area of Hong Kong.
The expansion comes through a take over of a former WeWork location, which is a growing trend as office landlords look to fill some of the 500+ fully-built coworking spaces that are sitting empty with no operator.
👉 Read this.
🎨 Brand unveils new brand identity through a harsh truth #
The folks at Spacemade officially roll out their new brand identity, focussing on the harsh truth about coworking: in that it’s never been JUST about offering a pretty space.
I like that they position their mission to create 1 million real-world connections within their spaces, I’d also love to geek out about how they’re thinking of tracking that.
👉 Read this.
✈️ Major US airline offers business customers on-demand coworking #
Industrious announced a partnership with Delta Airlines as part of their new Delta Business Traveler program, through which eligible members receive access to a variety of perks and benefits. The Industrious benefit provides access to their 200+ locations for just $99/month.
While some segments of business travel might have decreased, there is no denying the overall increase in business related travel due to hybrid work. Employers are taking the savings from downsizing their offices and putting it towards meetings and events, proving to be a growing segment of flex workspace customers.
👉 Read this.
🫘 Local network adds 7th location in Chicago #
Dane Dawson shares that EXPANSIVE are set to open their 7th location in Chicago in September.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Kane Willmott from iQ Offices joined Rick Spence on the Startup Canada Podcast about the future of work, the importance of purpose-driven spaces, leadership, and the role of personality tests in crafting winning teams.
Tobi Skovron, from AccelerateX, joins Liz Elam on the GCUC podcast and discusses making a positive global impact and turning ideas into award-winning brands like WorkSpace and CreativeCubes.co.
Dave Cairns from Kadence joins the Caleb Parker Show to discuss if the office has a role in the future of work, personal brands, the challenges workplace leaders face, the need for mindset shifts and how companies are adapting the way they work.
Trent Oswalt shares his journey from youth pastor to hybrid leasing pioneer and his career at Hines on the Flex Uncensored podcast.
