Oftentimes coworking spaces provide meeting rooms for free. This is a good marketing trick as nothing sweetens the deal more than freebies. Free meeting room hours can serve a kind of reward for those who buy a membership at the coworking space. The offer adds value to the membership plans and gives one more reason to join the community.
However, such lavishness definitely loved by members has its negative side. It results in multiple headaches for coworking space managers as they have to deal with issues caused by this generous offering.
How to Stay on the Brighter Side of Coworking Business
Members don’t realize the value of so-called free meeting room hours. Every now and again they make a reservation and simply don’t use it because it’s something free and unlimited. Previously we covered the topic of automating meeting room booking at a coworking space, where we introduced a meeting room credit system. The meeting room credit system helps to put the situation in control and even adds some fun gamification elements into the process of meeting space reservation.
You stop to reward the coworking space members with free meeting room hours and give them credits to book meeting space at your flexible workspace instead. When members pay for the meeting room reservation with credits they realize that the service is not unlimited, they start to value free hours more and use meeting room credits only when they actually need to book a shared meeting space. What’s more, getting and using meeting room booking credits let to involve the members into a kind of gameplay as credit symbols appear as emoji.
What Are Meeting Room Booking Credits
Meeting room booking credits are an advanced version of free hours to book meeting rooms. They appear in the form of emoji: ⭐️. This is fun, easy to understand, and offers greater flexibility to differentiate meeting rooms. With Spacebring coworking space management software, meeting room credits are used for booking a meeting room or a desk. For example, if a meeting room costs 1⭐️ per hour, members can spend 0.5 ⭐️ to book a meeting room for 30 minutes, 1⭐️ to book 1 hour, 2⭐️ to book 2 hours, and so on.
Important: Spacebring is the only coworking space software that provides utmost credit system flexibility. That means, members can spend their credits not only to book desks and rooms at a coworking space but also to buy event tickets, shop products, or other offerings. The feature turns credits into universal ‘currency’ that can be used exclusively at your coworking space.
Such universal credits usage is highly advantageous for coworking spaces as it helps to change members’ behaviour, develop healthy habits and routines, and enjoy their memberships more.
Check out the interview with Lindsay Hedenskog, the founder of LAMB, to see how she turned Spacebring’ credit system into the tool that changes members’ mindsets.
Benefits of Using Meeting Room Booking Credits System
Here is a list of some common issues addressed by the meeting room credit system:
- Abandoned bookings. Members book the rooms and then never show up. They may just forget about the booking as it is perceived as something free and unlimited, read not valuable.
- Overbooking. Some members book the entire room for themselves day by day turning it into their personal office. They don’t think if they really need all this space, neither do they think about other coworkers.
- Missed monetization opportunities. Sure enough that in both cases described above your business is losing money. The meeting space stays empty due to the unideal free hours booking system while it could accommodate paying customers.
The great news is that a meeting room credits system easily resolves all the above issues and contributes to the smooth running of your coworking space business.
Here’s what it does:
- Reduces abandoned meeting room bookings as members have a limited resource. They consider it valuable in contrast to unlimited uncountable free hours. Besides, the coworking space meeting room booking system reminds members about upcoming bookings with push notifications so it becomes impossible to forget about the booking.
- Increases member appreciation of provided services. A person spends meeting room credits to book a meeting room. They clearly understand that the service is paid and know how much it costs.
- Eliminates overbooking. Members have a limited number of meeting room booking credits. They can’t spend more credits than they’re given.
- Serves as an additional argument when attracting new members. You can negotiate the number of meeting room booking credits instead of making a discount when you try to sell membership to the prospective customer.
- Helps to earn more money. If a member runs out of credits, they can get an extra bundle right inside the app they use for bookings and pay with connected gateways or a monthly invoice.
- Helps to retain members. Customers will never leave your space up until they spend all their credits.😉
- Keeps credits information transparent for members. Individual members and company managers can review the current credit balance and full usage history at any moment, which contributes to building trust with your customers
- The meeting room booking credits system is extremely easy to set up and use. Members find it intuitive.
How Members Get Their Credits
There are three ways of getting meeting room booking credits:
- Subscribe to an individual monthly membership plan. In this case, credits are being delivered automatically and expire at the end of the month/subscription term.
- Join a team with a membership plan and a shared credit account. A team member will get access to the shared team credit account that can be used for meeting room booking.
- Go to Membership > Credits on Spacebring app, pick out the credit amount package, and purchase it. The credits will be instantly added to the account for immediate use. These credits won’t expire. A member will be able to use them even after their subscription comes to an end.
It goes without saying that the administrator can give or charge credits manually if needed.
Types of Meeting Room Booking Credits
Meeting room booking credits can be classified by the validity period and ownership.
There are two types of members’ credits determined by their validity period:
- Permanent meeting room booking credits. Credits of this type never expire. They stay valid even if the membership period is over. Members can use them any time, even if they decide to log back a few months later. Permanent credits are purchased by members or manually added by an administrator or moderator.
- Temporary meeting room booking credits. Credits of this type are received automatically when purchasing a coworking space membership plan. They expire at the end of the month or the subscription term. Spacebring coworking space management system shows how many credits will expire under the credit balance indicator.
Members’ credits are also divided by ownership:
- Personal meeting room booking credits. Visible to individual members only. Members can spend them freely and view balance history.
- Company meeting room booking credits. An awesome feature when free hours are shared by team members. Works similar to personal credits.
Members choose between personal or team credits when they book a room.
How to Organize Meeting Room Credits
Firstly you need to enable the meeting room booking system on Spacebring.
- Open workspace Settings > Bookings.
- Find the Credits System switch and turn it on.
- Press Save in the top right. The meeting room credits system is activated.
Next, you need to set meeting room prices in credits. You can set different credit prices for meeting rooms of different sizes. This is fair enough as maintenance costs of one hour in a room for four people and one hour in a room for 20 people are not the same. You can charge more credits for booking of larger rooms to optimize the balance of expenses and revenue.
How to Distribute Meeting Room Booking Credits
Meeting room booking credits can be given manually and automatically.
To give meeting room booking credits manually the admin needs to open the user or team profile on Spacebring Membership page, then navigate to the Credits section and find the +/- buttons to give/charge credits.
The automated way of distributing meeting room booking credits will save you time. When an admin creates coworking membership plans, they can indicate the number of credits they include. For example, they can specify that one month of renting a fixed desk comes with 30 ⭐️. When a member gets this plan, they receive these temporary meeting room booking credits automatically. Those credits expire at the end of the subscription term. This way allows 100% automated meeting room booking credits distribution, from receiving to using, which saves a lot of time.
Pro Tip: You can use meeting room booking credits as an additional argument when negotiating contracts with leads. For example, instead of giving a discount, you can offer more credits. This is a flexible tool to help you earn more.
Set up a self-service room booking system to improve customer experience and save time for staff
How to Use Meeting Room Booking Credits
Home Branch Booking
At the home coworking branch members can use credits to book meeting spaces. They open Spacebring app, navigate to Bookings, select a room, and then choose a payment method. Credits appear as one of the payment methods. It’s very convenient because members can book any time no matter their current location.
Inter-branch Booking
Members can use credits to book meeting rooms at other branches of the coworking space network. Inter-branch booking allowance can be set via Settings / Booking. For instance, if an allowance is 50% and a member has 40 ⭐️, then only 20 ⭐️ will be available for other branches. This allowance is applied to give home branch members a priority to book rooms.
Meeting Room Booking Refunds
Refunds are handled automatically. Your workspace policy is user-friendly. No hidden taxes or fees are applied. All meeting room booking credits are refunded if a booking is deleted before it starts. In other words, if a member cancels booking before it started, 100% is refunded. No refund is issued if a member cancels after the booking starts.
Out of Credits? Pay with a Debit/Credit Card!
If members run out of meeting room booking credits and don’t want to purchase a credit bundle, you can provide a fallback payment method that will also help you earn more: instant in-app debit/credit card payments. The option appears just beside credits, and if members run out of credits, they can select it to book a meeting room. Spacebring supports Stripe and a bunch of other payment methods.
Pro Tip: If card payments aren’t available in your country, you can sell meeting room booking credits as a kind of prepaid room booking account. Your members can “replenish” their meeting room booking credits account and book rooms whenever they want.
In Conclusion
We have just discussed the main benefits of meeting room booking credits introduction. Credits system can notably boost your coworking business revenue and bring some order to your workflow. Besides, it’s a powerful pain killer for coworking space managers. No abandoned bookings or overbookings anymore. Plus, it’s always good to have one more weighty argument when you are serious about closing a membership deal.
Want to know more about premium Spacebring solutions for flexible workspaces? Schedule a demo call with us!
