New FlexIndex Update: Here’s What Happened with the Flex Space Industry in January 2022

FlexIndex Overview

The expected post-holiday recovery didn’t occur, as the FlexIndex remained stable through January.

Static Desk Occupancy also remained stable, while RevPAW continued its steady improvement. However, the main reason for the stagnation of the FlexIndex is the decrease in ‘Average Booking Duration per Paid Meeting Space’ and as a result — the negative impact on ‘Booking Revenue per Paid Meeting Space’. Both KPIs have had a key role in the recovery process since the start of 2021. At the same time, the third booking KPI — ‘Bookings per Meeting Space’ — is recovering well, as you’ll see in a bit.

The increasing share of free bookings (starting in January 2021) also explains the dynamic of the booking KPIs.

If this trend continues during the upcoming months, the index could remain stable without reaching the 2019 benchmark.

The 5 FlexIndex Components (KPIs)

Here’s a breakdown of the 5 FlexIndex components in January 2022:

1. Static Desk Occupancy remained stable, finishing the month at ~2.5% below the 2019 benchmark.

2. Revenue per Available Workspace (RevPAW) kept its positive recovery trend and needs to close a ~7% gap to reclaim the 2019 benchmark levels.

3. Following the yearly pattern, ‘Bookings per Meeting Space’ is recovering after the holidays and closed Jan 2022 with a ~40% gap compared to the 2019 benchmark.

4. The ‘Average Booking Duration per Paid Meeting Space’ KPI has fallen off compared to December 2021 as is currently ~27% under the 2019 benchmark

5. Similar to the previous component, ‘Booking Revenue per Paid Meeting Space’ also regressed and is under the 2019 benchmark by ~39%.

For comparison, here’s a chart of all 3 Booking KPIs:

And a chart of all 5 FlexIndex components:

Our Commitment to Making FlexIndex the Industry-Standard Benchmark

As we said in the beginning, this month we’re making our findings more widely available for everyone in the global flex space community. This decision reflects our commitment to turning the FlexIndex into the standard benchmark for the flex space industry.

That’s why going forward:

• We’ll provide monthly FlexIndex updates on our blog and social media. As a result, everyone will be able to quickly track the industry’s performance and compare it to previous months or years.
• We’ll release quarterly FlexIndex reports on the official FlexIndex page. These will be downloadable documents, filled with in-depth analysis of the flex space market, as well as our expectations for the future.

Our commitment to the FlexIndex goes beyond making our insights ubiquitous, though. We also want to make the index as valuable as possible, which means we’ll be updating it to reflect vital industry changes. In the future, we may track new components (KPIs) and create different content types beyond blog posts and downloadable reports. What we have now is a promising start, but we’re far from done.

You can stay in touch with the latest FlexIndex updates by following us on social media and signing up here to receive them via email.