For years, coworking operators have lived with the same frustration. They build great spaces and price their day passes fairly. Then they hope travellers and remote workers somehow find them.
This summer, Airbnb offered a different answer. In a London pilot, the platform began selling coworking day passes, day offices and meeting rooms directly in its app. Months later, the industry is still debating what that means, especially for smaller, independent spaces.
Here’s what the pilot involves, why this attempt looks different from Airbnb’s earlier ones, and what flex operators across Europe can learn from it before a marketplace of this size knocks on their door.
What Airbnb is testing in London
Coworking now sits within Airbnb Services, the part of the app that also covers airport pickups, grocery delivery and car rental. Two London operators joined first: Oneder and Work.Life.
Oneder was founded in 2023 by David Kaiser, WeWork’s former head of real estate, and Dan Cohen, founder of Purpose Group. It lists day passes, private day offices and meeting rooms at its Kindling (White City) and Channel (King’s Cross) sites.
Work.Life has been operating since 2015 and now runs 11 locations across London and Manchester. It made three London sites bookable: St Cross Street, Borough and Holborn.
Two details matter:
- You don’t need an Airbnb stay to book a desk. Anyone with the app can book.
- The whole transaction happens inside Airbnb. Discovery, booking, payment and management all stay in the app. Nobody gets handed off to an operator’s own booking system.
Third time lucky?
Airbnb has tried this before. Airbnb for Business launched in 2014, followed by Airbnb for Work in 2018.
In 2017, a partnership with WeWork let guests in six cities, including London and Sydney, reserve a nearby desk alongside their stay. But users had to leave Airbnb to complete the booking, and the arrangement faded as WeWork’s finances unravelled. By 2020, Airbnb’s work offering had shrunk to a “laptop-friendly workspace” filter on listings.
The 2026 version is smaller and smarter:
- one city instead of six,
- a couple of well-run partners instead of one global giant,
- a booking flow that stays entirely inside the app.
It follows the playbook Airbnb used to rebuild its Experiences category: test quietly, keep supply tight, and only scale if the numbers work.
For Airbnb, the prize is not just commission. Coworking gives users a reason to open the app on an ordinary Tuesday, not only when they’re planning a trip. It also gives the platform new signals about who travels for work, and why.
The trade-off operators can’t ignore
For operators, the upside is obvious: reach. Airbnb puts your space in front of people who may never have searched for “coworking” at all. If you have empty desks on a Wednesday or a meeting room that sits idle half the week, that’s real extra revenue.
But reach at this scale rarely comes free. The hotel sector learned that the hard way with online travel agencies:
- Platforms that started as helpful extra channels became gatekeepers.
- Commission rates crept up.
- Hotels ended up paying to reach guests who might have booked directly.
Coworking operators would be wise to study that story closely.
Then there’s the community question. A one-off visitor booked through a travel app may treat your space like a café with better Wi-Fi. That’s fine for revenue, but it can dilute the atmosphere your members pay for.
Larger brands with many locations can absorb that traffic more easily. A 40-desk independent space feels it immediately. That is exactly why many independent operators have always been cautious about day passes and ad-hoc bookings.
How to make platform bookings work for you
If Airbnb, or a similar marketplace, expands to the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe, operators don’t have to choose between “all in” and “no thanks”. A few principles help.
- Treat it as a funnel, not a channel: A day-pass guest is worth more than one day’s fee. The real value is the chance they return as a member, bring their team, or book your boardroom for an offsite. Have a follow-up plan for every platform guest: a warm welcome at reception, a trial offer, a reason to come back.
- Cap your exposure: Decide how many desks and which rooms you’re willing to sell through third parties, and when. Off-peak inventory and underused meeting rooms are natural candidates. Your members’ favourite spots at peak hours are not.
- Protect your direct price: If the cheapest way to book your space is through someone else’s app, you’re training customers to skip your website. Keep pricing consistent and give direct bookers a tangible reason to come to you.
- Own the relationship: Know what customer data the platform shares with you, and make sure your own systems capture guests once they walk through the door.
The bigger picture
Airbnb’s London pilot is small, and coworking may never become a major category for the platform. But it signals something important: flexible workspace is becoming an everyday bookable service, in the same app people use to book a flat or an airport transfer.
That’s good news for awareness of coworking as a whole. Whether it’s good news for individual operators depends on how deliberately they engage. The smartest operators will treat every new marketplace the same way: welcome the visibility, set the terms, and turn one-time visitors into long-term members.
