At the Global Workspace Association (GWA) Conference in Atlanta on September 19, 2013, Laurent discussed his perspectives on what Workplace Providers can do to maximize revenue. With this slide, he discussed the rise of VO revenue industry-wide.
On average, office business center revenue grew 12.5% between 2007 and 2012. This factors only “same store sales”, for centers that were in operation in 2007, and does not represent the growth of the overall Workspace-as-a-Service industry which was much more significant, after factoring the creation of new business centers and new coworking places in that time period. This is based on an annual survey of Global Workspace Association members that gathers several hundreds of data points. The most recent GWA 2013 Financial Survey, which can be purchased on the GWA website, is skewed geographically to the U.S. (with a few international respondents) and towards Business Centers (vs. Coworking places which were only recent additions to the list of surveyed providers).
Laurent pointed out that a 12.5% growth over 5 years may not seem like much. However, we should keep in mind that considering the Great Recession that hit so hard in 2008 through 2010, it is not a bad performance. What’s really interesting in the data, however, is that the revenue from dedicated offices, historically the bread and butter of business centers, actually dropped by 1.1%! All of the growth came from Virtual Office and Meeting Room Revenue, with Virtual office growing by an astounding 51.1%.
The demand for Virtual Offices had increased steadily, in recessionary and expansionary times. Workspace providers with an active Virtual Office strategy did very well, while those who solely relied on traditional dedicated office revenue have suffered.
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