WeWork's 2,000-Location Partner Network: Should Your Hotel Join or Build Its Own Platform?

Hotel coworking: how workspitality turns hotels into flexible workspace nodes

Hotel coworking as a flex node, not a lobby side project

Hotel coworking has shifted from a design flourish to a distribution decision in the wider workspitality market. When the WeWork Access and All Access programs reached roughly 700–800 participating locations worldwide in the early 2020s (WeWork company filings and earnings calls, 2021–2022; figures include both dedicated offices and partner venues, not just hotels), hotels stopped being isolated properties and started to look like potential nodes in a global flexible workspace grid. For a hotel group VP, that means every hotel lobby, bar, and underused meeting room is now a potential coworking space with measurable revenue, not just a pleasant place to work for a few hotel guests.

Across global hotels, operators are rethinking how spaces and rooms work during the day, especially where traditional meetings have softened and digital nomads quietly occupy sofas with laptops. Some properties are converting parts of their open space into structured coworking areas with clear access rules, hotel coworking day passes, and office-style services, while others test a single coworking room carved out of existing meeting spaces to generate revenue without capex-heavy private offices. Industry surveys from hotel asset managers and workspace platforms (for example, JLL Hotels & Hospitality research on hybrid hospitality, 2022–2023, and flexible office platform pricing reports) confirm this shift, noting that hotels provide coworking spaces for professionals to attract remote workers, increase hotel revenue, and enhance guest experience by activating previously idle square footage.

Economically, the aggregator model is simple but not neutral; WeWork and similar flexible office platforms typically take 15–25 percent of topline revenue from each coworking hotel booking, in line with common marketplace commission ranges reported in flexible office brokerage agreements and operator disclosures. For a 200-room working hotel with strong weekday demand for meeting rooms and a few premium room suites, that take rate can equal the annual payroll of a small digital marketing team or the fit-out of a new space-hotel-style lounge. A worked example illustrates the trade-off and makes the workspitality ROI tangible: if a hotel generates 400,000 USD per year from coworking passes and meeting room bookings routed through an aggregator, a 20 percent fee removes 80,000 USD that could otherwise fund direct sales, CRM, or community programming.

Illustrative coworking revenue split for a 200-room hotel

The strategic question is whether the hotel will accept that margin trade-off in exchange for instant access to a global pool of workers, or whether the brand prefers to build its own place-of-work identity and own the customer data end to end.

Three operating archetypes for hotel coworking portfolios

Three clear archetypes now frame the hotel coworking playbook for asset directors and innovation leaders. Lifestyle-native brands such as Hoxton and Accor’s Mama Shelter treat the lobby as a coworking space by default, with long tables, strong coffee, and no friction for workers who arrive without a hotel room key. In these hotels, the line between hotel guests and external professionals is intentionally blurred, and the lobby becomes a permanent meeting space where community and F&B revenue rise together.

The second archetype is the hybrid, brand-integrated model seen in Pullman and some upscale hotels that formalise their coworking spaces while keeping them on brand. Here, a defined coworking space or a cluster of meeting rooms is packaged with day passes, office-like services, and digital access control, but still marketed under the core hotel brand rather than as a separate coworking hotel label. Case studies from Dublin hotels with on-site coworking spaces for modern professionals (including internal reporting from a 4-star business hotel near the Docklands, 2023) show how this approach can lift midweek F&B revenue and extend average length of stay for corporate workers who value a reliable workspace as much as a quiet hotel room; one Irish business hotel reported that guests using its branded coworking lounge stayed 0.4 nights longer on average and spent 18 percent more on food and beverage than comparable non-users.

The third archetype is the pure distribution play, where a mid-scale property joins an aggregator network such as WeWork or a similar flexible office marketplace to fill daytime capacity in its meeting room inventory and underused room suites. In this model, the hotel group trades some margin to generate revenue quickly from coworking spaces without building its own digital platform, CRM, or community programming. For a 150-room space hotel near a transport hub, plugging meeting rooms and a few private offices into a global coworking-spaces marketplace can be the fastest way to test demand from digital nomads and local professionals without reconfiguring the entire place-of-work layout or committing to a full-scale redesign.

Community impact, brand risk, and a decision framework for 100–500 room assets

Community is where the aggregator versus proprietary choice becomes visible to hotel guests and to HR leaders booking space for their teams. A bar full of WeWork members at 14:00 on a Tuesday changes the perceived promise of a leisure-focused hotel, even if the rooms remain quiet and the pool serene. At the same time, remote workers and digital nomads expect frictionless access to workspace, reliable Wi‑Fi, and meeting spaces that feel like an office, not a leftover corner of the breakfast room.

For a 100–500 room property, the decision framework is brutally practical: join an aggregator when you have surplus meeting rooms, a central location, and limited brand equity in work; build proprietary when your hotel group wants a long-term flex workspace strategy; and do nothing when your rooms, suites, and F&B already run near capacity. Properties such as Best Western Americania in San Francisco, which has elevated coworking experiences with innovation, access, and guest-centric solutions in SoMa (as described in operator interviews and local hospitality press coverage), show how a working hotel can layer coworking spaces, private offices, and flexible meeting rooms into an existing asset without alienating core leisure segments. Portfolio leaders tracking investor sentiment can also look to recent workspitality underwriting signals, where flex workspace revenue is now considered in some deals as a stabilised line item rather than an ancillary experiment, particularly in urban markets with sustained remote-work demand.

Operationally, hotel teams must define who the coworking space is really for: local professionals needing a place to work each day, transient digital nomads, or in-house corporate guests who want a quiet meeting room between client visits. Clear segmentation informs whether the hotel will prioritise open-space drop-in access, bookable meeting rooms, or subscription-style office services that generate revenue with predictable monthly cash flow. For HR directors and corporate real estate leaders, hotel coworking offers a distributed workspace network that can complement traditional offices, but only when the hotel’s community, digital access, and service standards feel as intentional as any dedicated workspace operator and are communicated transparently in booking journeys.