Ask any coworking member about the meeting rooms and you will often hear the same complaint: they’re always booked. Ask the data, and you get a very different answer.
New figures from coworking software platform Cobot show that meeting rooms in coworking spaces sit unused for most of the working week. Outside customers, the people most likely to pay a premium, barely use them at all. For an industry under pressure to find new revenue, that is a remarkable blind spot. The product already exists, the furniture is in place, and the rent is already being paid.
Booked out? The data says 88% of the week is empty
Cobot analysed coworking spaces in its German dataset and found that meeting rooms were used for about 12% of their available capacity, based on an eight-hour day and a five-day week. Even on the busiest days in larger cities, utilisation only reached around 20%. According to Cobot, data from other European markets shows similar patterns.
The external picture is even starker. Roughly 62% of the spaces analysed already allow outsiders to book their rooms. Yet bookings made by external customers through those tools accounted for just 0.6% of utilisation. Another 3% were entered by administrators, and some of those may be outside clients who phoned or emailed. Even adding both together, external use stays below 4%.
So most operators have opened the door to outside bookers. Hardly anyone is walking through it.
Full on Tuesday at 11, deserted on Friday at 3
If the rooms are so empty, why do members complain they can never get one? The answer is timing. Industry research has found that a significant share of members struggle to book a room in the late-morning to early-afternoon window midweek. Demand bunches into a few hours on a few days, while early mornings, late afternoons, Mondays and Fridays stay quiet.
That creates a perception problem. Operators feel their rooms are in demand, so they hesitate to promote them to outsiders for fear of upsetting members. Members experience scarcity at exactly the moments they need a room. Meanwhile, the room stands empty for most of the remaining week. Cobot’s data suggests the fear of external customers crowding out members is largely unfounded at current utilisation levels.
Charging outsiders more doesn’t scare them off
A common assumption is that winning external customers means competing on price. Cobot’s figures point the other way. In German cities, the median operator charges outsiders about 1.5 times the member rate, and the top 10% charge more than double. Rooms with higher external markups were actually more popular with both members and outsiders.
That does not mean raising prices creates demand. The more likely explanation is that good rooms can command good prices, and operators with popular rooms use pricing to manage demand. Cobot also found that rooms popular with members tend to attract more external bookings. A well-designed, well-equipped room appeals to everyone.
When one product pays the bills, every empty room hurts
Meeting rooms are not a side issue. Recent operator research shows private offices now generate around 72.5% of average coworking revenue, while classic coworking memberships bring in less than 9%. On-demand products, including meeting rooms, day passes and event space, add roughly another 7%.
In other words, operators depend heavily on one product: the private office. Meeting rooms are one of the few revenue streams that need little or no extra space or capital investment. Every hour sold to an outside customer is almost pure margin, and each visit is a chance to win a future member.
Five ways to get strangers through the glass door
Based on Cobot’s findings and broader industry practice, a few practical steps stand out.
- Make the room visible: Most external customers will never find a room that only appears on the operator’s own website. Listing rooms on Google Maps and on meeting room platforms such as Meet&Co widens the shop window considerably.
- Show, don’t tell: An outsider can’t picture the space the way a member can. Professional photos, capacity, room layout, AV equipment, accessibility and catering options all reduce doubt before booking.
- Make it transactional: Many operators still handle external enquiries by phone or email, with back-and-forth before anything is confirmed. Letting customers see the price and conditions and book instantly removes friction. Details can be sorted afterwards.
- Price by time, not just by room: With demand concentrated at midweek peaks, differentiated pricing makes sense: premium rates at peak times and attractive rates for off-peak hours. That protects member availability when it matters and fills the quiet slots.
- Treat it as a product line: Give meeting rooms their own targets, tracking and owner. What gets measured gets managed, and right now many operators don’t know their own room utilisation.
The cheapest square metre is the one you’re already paying for
The coworking industry spends a lot of energy on expansion, new locations and new concepts. Yet some of the easiest revenue is sitting behind a glass door down the corridor, empty for most of the week. Operators who make their meeting rooms easy to find, easy to understand and easy to book can unlock that revenue without adding a single square metre.
