Meeting room booking is one of the most common requests a coworking space handles, often dozens of times a day. The same is true for flexible workspaces and office centers.
Without dedicated meeting room booking software, most spaces end up scheduling reservations in Google Calendar and sharing it with members, or taking bookings by hand.
That works at a handful of reservations a week. It breaks down fast once multiple members, teams, and locations are booking the same rooms.
The future belongs to coworking spaces prioritizing members' experience, relying on modern technology, and building a solid brand. This article compares the two approaches so you can see exactly what a dedicated system adds.
Google Calendar for meeting room booking: usability issues
Here's where Google Calendar (and similar shared-calendar setups) tends to break down as a coworking space's meeting room booking system:
- Two or more members make a reservation for the same time. The usage of Google Calendar does not prevent meeting room booking conflicts.
- As all members use the same calendar anyone can accidentally remove any event and the reservation disappears.
- Marking reservations in Google Calendar can hardly be called an intuitive meeting room booking process which leads to lower usage, so the next issue is the low utilization rate.
- There are no stated meeting room booking rules in Google Calendar, which leads to unfair usage. For instance, any room can be booked for a too long period by the same person.
- There is no meeting space usage statistics, which is not very good for management, you don't see the numbers and have to make additional efforts to figure out what's going on in your space.
- With Google Calendar you handle each reservation request manually, which is time-consuming, especially if your coworking space gives free hours to members.
- It’s impossible to connect any payment gateway to Google Calendar, so the payments are processed by the manager, which takes time and doesn’t contribute to member experience.
Google Calendar is a fine personal scheduling tool, but it wasn't built to manage a shared, monetized resource like a coworking meeting room.
If you want to optimize meeting room bookings at your space, automate them with a self-service booking system built into your main coworking space management platform, rather than layering more manual process on top of a calendar.
As a rule, meeting room booking systems come with several configurations. Let’s take a look at what you get on Spacebring’ example and learn how to tweak the system to fit your needs better.
Meeting Room Booking Solution Settings Google Calendar Does Not Offer
1. The Range of Time for Meeting Room Reservation (From/Until)
A meeting room booking system allows setting the range of time when people can make meeting room reservations. You can keep it from 00:00 to 24:00 as it is by default on Spacebring, but I recommend setting more realistic values. You don't want members to call you at night complaining that the door is closed, do you? In addition, it is just more convenient to see reservations on the calendar view.
2. The Period of Meeting Room Booking
Limit the period of meeting room booking if you don't want people to make room reservations, say, for the next year. Here you can set up the maximum time people can book ahead of today.
Set up a self-service room booking system to improve customer experience and save time for staff
3. Set the Available Days
There are days when your space is closed. Turn off the meeting room booking system for weekends or other days when you need a time out. It helps you to make sure people never book when you are closed and there are no complaints about not informing them.
4. Require Meeting Room Booking Purpose
Want to know why people book rooms? This is essential if you want to improve the user experience. You can use this information to analyze the usage and install additional equipment, e.g. whiteboard when you notice members use the room for open team discussions.
5. Free Hour Credit System
It is important to provide limited access to meeting rooms even if it is unlimited in your space. People often make reservations and don't use them because they take the perk for granted. Why should they care for something free and unlimited? Once you give them credits, members realize it's not unlimited, start to value free hours more and use credits carefully only when they actually need it.
What coworking space software with a meeting room scheduling solution does and Google Calendar does not, is an automated distribution of credits, which takes a huge amount of work off managers’ shoulders.
6. Upsell Your Members
Using workspace management software, you can sell your services such as meeting rooms to teams more efficiently. For instance, Spacebring’ Company invoice payment option allows tenants to enjoy the services now and pay for them later.
Let me elaborate on this a bit. If a team member needs to reserve a meeting room but there are no credits in the corporate account, they just choose the Company invoice payment option and complete the reservation without distracting the team leader and asking the community manager to fix the issue. At the end of the month, the company manager will receive the statement with all extra bookings and pay the bill with a credit card or bank transfer. The process is similar for individual members.
7. Make Your Meeting Rooms Available for External Bookings
Implementation of a meeting room booking system inside the main coworking space app opens up new revenue streams for coworking space owners. You can make some of your rooms visible to the general public and start selling them externally to customers that are not signed up for your membership. To book a room at your flexible workspace and pay for it will be as easy as downloading your app and opening it on a smartphone any time at any place on Earth. If customers have questions about their bookings, they can send you an instant message via Chats in the same app.
8. Forget about Abandoned Bookings
I have already mentioned above that the abandoned bookings problem can be partially addressed with the help of credits. A meeting room display with a check-in feature will let you completely forget about it.
If you are using a meeting room display, you can activate an auto-release feature. When the option is turned on, all free bookings will require a check-in. If a member does not check-in, the system automatically cancels the reservation which makes your meeting room available for another booking and prevents money/hour loss.
9. Make Some Meeting Rooms Private
Sometimes workspaces have an agreement with tenants that only certain teams will have access to particular meeting rooms. You can indicate specific meeting rooms as private and they will become invisible (unavailable) for the rest of your members.
10. Build in Turnover Time
Back-to-back bookings don't leave time to tidy a room, reset the furniture, or wipe down shared equipment between meetings. Meeting room booking software can automatically reserve a buffer, such as 15 minutes, between bookings so staff always have time to prep the room for the next group.
Discover how hundreds of spaces worldwide unlock success and grow better with Spacebring
Well, these were 10 features of a professional meeting room booking system Google Calendar fails to provide. Now, let’s dig a little deeper and tackle some room-specific settings that will make your entire booking platform even more user-friendly.
Meeting Room Settings Google Calendar Does Not Provide
1. Add Images
People like to see what they buy. It's natural that they may want to see if the room is suitable for them or not, especially if they are new in your space. Adding a room image helps members make a well-grounded decision to book your space.
2. Give Rooms Creative Names
Give meeting rooms unique names so people can identify them easier. Be creative and give some cool names like Mars, Venus, etc. Very soon you'll make sure that stylized rooms are more attractive for the visitors.
3. Add Room Descriptions
The description helps to better understand the purpose of the room. You can also list available equipment.
For example:
- projector,
- monitor,
- whiteboard,
- WiFi password, as well as write specific booking rules and regulations.
4. State the Number of Seats
You can identify the number of seats available in a meeting room.
It's always good to indicate seat count so that one person doesn't book a 20-seat conference room for a one-on-one meeting.
5. Set Hourly Prices for Workstations
Your rooms may be free or cost money to use. Set an hourly price and start making money right away. Members will see an option to pay with a debit or credit card on the booking page. This is very useful because customers want to know how much coworking will cost to plan their budget accordingly.
6. State Price in Credits
Indicate the number of credits needed to make a room reservation, and members will be able to pay with individual or team credit balances. I have already mentioned above what credits are, meeting room price set in credits will help members to use them wisely.
7. Minimum and Maximum Reservation Time
This is an extra feature that helps utilize rooms fairly. Minimum time ensures nobody books a 100-seat conference hall for 15 minutes. Maximum time prevents members from monopolizing a free meeting room. And the booking system itself guarantees there are no two meetings scheduled in the same room at once, so there are no "I booked first" disputes to referee.
For design ideas to make the rooms themselves worth booking, see our guide to meeting room design ideas.
8. Access Control
When members book meeting rooms, an access control system like Kisi, or SALTO KS can allow access to the room within a booking time by means of integration. Some workspaces are concerned about preventing unauthorized use of meeting rooms, if you are one of them, please find more info on the topic here: Big Guide on Touchless Automated 24/7 Access to Your Coworking Space.
9. Export to Calendar
Many people want to use a single calendar in order to see the schedule of the day. Want to see your bookings in your favorite calendar (Apple, Google, Microsoft)? Here’s how to sync calendars on Spacebring:
- Open the Spacebring app.
- Go to a "Profile" tab.
- Click on a "Calendar Sync" button.
- Follow the instructions.
10. Analytics
It's important to analyze all processes that take place at your workspace if you want to improve business performance. If you use a meeting room booking system, comprehensive information on space usage is always at hand through Analytics solution that collects essential data and visualizes it on simple dashboards. Knowing the numbers will help you reveal all bottlenecks in time and increase productivity.
Over to you
Still running meeting room bookings through Google Calendar? Every gap it leaves, no double-booking prevention, no usage data, no automated payments, is admin work someone on your team is doing by hand instead.
Give Spacebring a try and see what a dedicated meeting room booking system does for your revenue and your members' experience.
