Hotels Offering Tiered Spaces for the Remote Work Era

As Accor continues to stamp its Wojo co-working brand across all its properties, it can expect more competition from other hotel brands that are starting to offer their own premium spaces.

A growing number of startups are also looking to fill the gap by “activating” these spaces in top-end hotels — a potential signal this particular area of hospitality is fast maturing.

Worklounge, for example, is a flexible workspace startup that offers subscriptions to high quality business, executive and club lounges in four- and five-star hotels. These areas in theory can offer a more relaxed working atmosphere, particularly if they provide hotel comforts and reflect the hotel's design, rather than typically efficient co-working spaces that focus on desks, cubicles and sound-proofed booths. In Thailand, it already plugs into brands like InterContinental and Sofitel.

“Quite a few traditional hotel companies were trying to catch up by developing some kind of work-from-hotel concept,” said Riku Penttinen, its co-founder.

“In early 2020 I was receiving requests from hotel companies and operators that wanted to open a flexible workspace.," Penttinen said. "That was the lightbulb moment for us — there are so many underutilized spaces in upscale hotels. If we could find a way to activate this inventory, in a way that would benefit both the hotel and the end user, we’d be on to something big.”

Join Us Online at Skift Aviation Forum on November 17

Krow is another new subscription service, offering premium locations in Portugal, and it targets restaura