#27 "The traditional office model was not facing enough competition" - John Williams, Instant Group

John Williams and James Rankin are respectively CMO and Head of Research of The Instant Group, a multi-services company focused on Flexible Workspaces and Coworking products.

The Instant Group has a unique position to spot the latest trends in the coworking market on the EMEA level has well as on the international field.

Conversation with two very knowledgeable gentlemen who know a lot about the coworking world internationally and where it is heading to post-Covid19.

In addition, here are some of the figures observed by The Instant Group:

-Demand for flexible workspace seems to have regained a lot of its momentum over the last month. 3-4 week ago most EU markets had similar levels of interest to Pre-Covid, over the last 1 to 2 weeks it appears to have slipped again.

What has caused this: Caution around secondary spikes in Covid-19, increased information about the effects of remote working and therefore a longer but more insight based decision making process.

-7 of their top 13 global markets are still seeing demand levels as high as those found pre-covid and really only Spain and the UK are significantly behind previous levels.

-While interest or demand appears high there is still three more stages (enquiry, viewing, transaction/move in) before sales will happen, therefore it will take longer before transactions increase.

-Coworking looks to have been the most impacted market during Covid-19, but was able to respond the quickest, probably due to the communities that these spaces created and the smaller occupier groups they attracted. Lots had already decided that working from home was not the right option for them. Due to this, TIG saw the average deal size of transactions increase across EMEA during Covid-19 to 8.3 workstations, a 22% increase on 2019 levels.

-There is a lot of talk in the industry about the office being “dead” and news channels have picked up on this. The reality is that customers are not saying this but they are looking to change their long term strategy. All of the large corporates that TIG talked to indicated various levels of intent.

-One of the big up and coming trends that everyone is talking about is the move to a hub and spoke model. Data shows not only is this already happening with demand for spaces in satellite towns and villages now consistently above that of the primary city, but the impact of Covid-19 to these markets was far lower. A good % actually didn’t see demand levels drop during Covid-19, which is an indicator of the robust nature of these localised markets, even in tough economic climates. That being said, supply in those regions is often severely lacking. That is the next piece of research The Instant Group will be undertaking.

- Pricing has been impacted on various levels. Although some providers say it is only due to one-time incentives being offered and therefore short term, data shows a sharp decline in rates across Europe with secondary cities and rural locations seeing the highest impact at the moment