The real question comes before any talk of desks: will someone actually pay to sit there? Answering straight away would be dishonest, because it depends on how the space is built. The starting numbers, though, are fixed.
You need 40-60 sqm net to fit 10-14 workstations, tops at 73-75 cm height with at least 70 x 60 cm of surface per person, gas-lift chairs adjustable between 42 and 55 cm with 45-50 kg/m³ foam, 500 lux at 4000 K measured on the desk, a Schuko socket with USB-C at every seat, and one soundproofed booth for every 8-10 workstations. Anyone who meets these figures has sellable floor space. Anyone who skips two or three of them has a lobby with more sockets, and the answer to the opening question becomes no.
Contents
Who hotel coworking is for
Hybrid work has produced two customers the traditional hotel never served. The first stays and works: three nights in the property and two mornings when they need four hours of concentration and a decent video call. Today they do it from the room desk, sized for answering two emails, or from the lobby, where the whole reception team hears everything.
The second doesn’t stay overnight at all: consultants on a day trip, local professionals, employees of companies with no office in that city. It’s this profile that pays for the floor space, and spends at the bar while occupying it.
Market rates for a day-use desk sit roughly between 15 and 35 euros a day, and a part-time membership between 120 and 250 euros a month, with a wide gap between city centre and outskirts. With twelve desks and a realistic 40-50% occupancy on working days, the revenue comes from square metres that today host a meeting room used ten times a year.
The three types of workstation and their proportions
A coworking space with only one type of seat stays half empty, because not all working hours are the same.
Single desks with screening account for 40-50% of seats: an 80 x 60 or 120 x 60 cm top, a 40-50 cm high front and side panel in polyester fibre, a personal drawer unit, an adjustable chair. These are the seats that sell as memberships. Made to measure, hotel desks solve the irregular widths of converted rooms and let the module line up with the window spacing.
The shared table covers 30-40%: a 240 x 100 or 300 x 120 cm top for six to eight people, a central divider, one power tower for every two chairs. It costs less and works well for two- or three-hour stays. Booths and small meeting rooms take up the rest, with at least one single-person 100 x 100 cm booth for every 8-10 seats.
| Type | Footprint per seat | Top | Indicative cost per seat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single desk with panels | 3.5-4.5 sqm | 80×60 or 120×60 cm | €700-1,800 |
| Seat at shared table | 2.5-3.5 sqm | 120×60 cm top | €400-900 |
| Seat in a small meeting room | 3-4 sqm | 180×90 table for 4-6 | €350-800 |
| Single-person phone booth | 1.5-2.5 sqm external | 60×40 cm shelf | €4,000-9,000 |
Footprints include the aisles. On 50 sqm net, you get to 12-14 seats with one booth, not twenty: the central row of a dense coworking layout is the one nobody books.
Ergonomic seating: the piece that makes the difference
This is where the technical difference between a coworking space and a lounge area lies, and it’s the item where cutting the budget does the most damage. A lobby armchair is built for fifteen-minute stays: short backrest, no adjustment, 30-35 kg/m³ foam.
After three hours at a 75 cm desk it causes back pain, and the customer doesn’t come back. A contract operational chair, by contrast, needs to hold up over eight hours and different body types. The minimum requirements to ask for in a quote:
- gas-lift height adjustment between 42 and 55 cm, the most important adjustment and the cheapest;
- lumbar support present, ideally adjustable over a 5-7 cm range;
- backrest with lockable or synchronised tilt, with tension calibrated to weight;
- usable depth of 40-45 cm, with a waterfall front edge so it doesn’t compress circulation behind the knee;
- armrests adjustable between 20 and 27 cm above the seat;
- 45-50 kg/m³ foam, or a good-quality tensioned mesh backrest;
- five-star base with castors matched to the floor, hard wheels on carpet and rubber-rimmed on stoneware;
- contract upholstery with high abrasion resistance and, for upholstered pieces in hospitality premises, Fire Class 1 IM certification.
The price of a chair with proper adjustments runs roughly 200 to 600 euros. Hotel armchairs remain useful in a break corner with a low table, two or three pieces at most. Not at the workstations.
Power and network at every desk
The rule allows no exceptions: every seat has its own power, reachable without moving anything and with no cables on the floor. Every exception generates power strips and extension leads within the first week.
There are only a few clean solutions. Recessed power towers in the desktop, pop-up or flip-up, with two Schuko sockets, one USB-A and one USB-C sized for a laptop, one for every two seats on a shared table. A continuous under-desk aluminium channel fixed to the frame rails, where the cables run and the power supplies sit.
Cable pass-throughs inside the legs, with a single drop to the floor. And an RJ45 socket for every single desk, because anyone spending the day on video calls will ask for the cable, and fitting it during the build costs a fraction of adding it afterwards.
If an external monitor is offered, the thickness of the desktop needs checking, since standard clamps work between 15 and 40 mm. Wi-Fi coverage should be measured with the room at full capacity: twelve devices on a video call is a different load from twelve guests streaming a film.
Isolating video-call noise: booths and sound absorption
If customers abandon a hotel coworking space, in most cases the cause is the neighbour’s video call, and the fix comes from the space itself more than from etiquette.
The soundproofed booth is the only countermeasure that genuinely solves it. A single-person booth at 100 x 100 or 120 x 100 cm, plywood walls, laminated glass, sound-absorbing interior lining, light, socket and quiet forced ventilation.
The attenuation declared by reputable manufacturers is generally between 25 and 35 dB, so not absolute isolation but enough that a normal conversation becomes an incomprehensible murmur outside. Ventilation needs checking on the data sheet, because a booth with no air exchange gets abandoned within ten minutes, and that’s the typical flaw of cheap models. The indicative cost runs from 4,000 to 9,000 euros for the single-person version and 9,000 to 20,000 for a four-person one.
Polyester-fibre divider panels, 24-30 mm, intercept voice at the source, and should be paired with ceiling panels: in a room with stoneware flooring and plasterboard, reverberation makes any call unintelligible. Carpet cuts footfall noise, which in a quiet environment is the most noticeable sound, and curtains weighing 350-450 g/sqm do the rest.
A call-free zone is also needed, physically separated by double-sided bookcases or tall planters, not a sign. True deep silence, the kind reading requires, belongs to a project with opposite geometry, that of the reading room.
Working light: 500 lux at 4000 K on the desk
Coworking is the only space in the hotel where light needs to be neutral and abundant: the 2700 K and 200 lux that work in the lobby feel drowsy here. The desktop needs 500 lux maintained, with reasonable uniformity across the whole workstation: below 300 lux, the eyes tire reading paper documents.
The right temperature is 4000 K with a CRI of at least 80, because above 5000 K the room starts to feel clinical. Fittings need to be shielded and low-glare, since a ceiling light reflecting on the screen is the most common mistake: on shared tables, linear pendant fittings with direct and indirect emission work well, 70-80 cm above the desktop, and every single desk needs an adjustable lamp with its own switch.
Orientation matters as much as the fittings: screens perpendicular to the window, because facing the glass shows a reflection and sitting with the window behind creates blinding contrast. Roller blinds in screen fabric, operable from a seated position, close off the glare issue.
Numbering, booking and access control
A working space becomes a service once it’s bookable and controllable. Desks need numbering on the divider panel or the edge of the top, coordinated with the PMS, otherwise you can’t sell a membership or handle a complaint.
Booths need to be bookable in thirty-minute slots, with a free/occupied indicator by the door. And if the space is open to non-residents, access requires a badge or code on a route separate from the one leading to the rooms, because a day-use customer shouldn’t be able to go up to the floors.
Two pieces that look like accessories decide the revenue. Personal lockers, modules of roughly 30 x 45 x 40 cm stacked in three or four rows, turn a one-off visit into a monthly membership, because they let people leave a monitor, cables and documents behind.
A 90 cm service unit with a coffee machine, water, bins and an HPL top stops customers disappearing to the bar for half an hour. A closed cupboard for spare chairs and extension leads should be added, otherwise that kit ends up on a desk, which becomes unusable.
Reconfiguring the coworking space for evening use
A space that only works from nine to six earns half of what it could, but reconfigurability needs designing in: if freeing up the room takes three people and two hours, it will never happen.
You need tables on braked castors with fold-down tops, which take up 25 cm of depth folded vertically against the wall for a 160 x 80 cm top, a stock of stackable chairs equal to 20-30% of the seats, sound-absorbing dividers on castors, pop-up power towers instead of fixed trunking, and a point with a socket and HDMI on a fitted wall. Then two separate dimmable circuits, a working scenario at 500 lux and 4000 K and an evening scenario at 200 lux with 3000 K blended in.
Is it worth opening a coworking space in a hotel? Revenue and constraints
Yes, on one condition and with a realistic expectation. The condition is that every item is there: adjustable chairs, power at every seat, at least one booth, working light, lockers, controlled access. If the budget doesn’t stretch to the booth, cut the number of desks and buy it anyway.
The realistic expectation is that of an ancillary service, one that gives the property a qualifying edge, retains business customers and drives bar spend: it’s unlikely to compete with the big operators in the sector, and on its own it won’t pay back the space.
There’s a chapter that has nothing to do with furniture. Opening a space to people who aren’t staying guests carries administrative, tax and safety implications (occupancy, escape routes, toilets) that need checking with your own professional and accountant before drawing up the layout.
For hospitality properties, the fire safety reference remains the Ministerial Decree of 9 April 1994, and premises above 25 beds fall under Presidential Decree 151/2011, activity no. 66. Once those points are settled, a quote against a real layout tells you in a few lines how many seats fit in those square metres.
Frequently asked questions about hotel coworking
How many square metres does a hotel coworking space need?
With 40-60 sqm net you get 10-14 workstations plus a soundproofed booth, counting 3.5-4.5 sqm per single desk and 2.5-3.5 sqm per seat on a shared table, aisles included. Below 30 sqm, a single six-seat shared table with one booth is the better option. Excessive density is the most common cause of unsold seats.
What chair do I actually need?
A contract operational chair with gas-lift adjustment between 42 and 55 cm, lumbar support, adjustable backrest tilt, usable depth of 40-45 cm, adjustable armrests, 45-50 kg/m³ foam and castors suited to the floor. Indicative cost between 200 and 600 euros. Lobby armchairs don’t hold up beyond an hour.
Can I reuse the meeting room I already have?
Partly. A conference table and meeting chairs don’t hold up over eight hours, and there’s no power per seat, no panels, no booth and no lockers. You need to replace the chairs, add electrified power towers, sound-absorbing dividers and a booth. With tables on castors and fold-down tops, the room can go back to a meeting configuration.
Is it really worth spending 4,000 euros on a booth?
Yes, and it’s the item that determines whether the space gets used. A single-person booth at 100 x 100 cm with forced ventilation, laminated glass and sound-absorbing lining generally attenuates between 25 and 35 dB, enough that a call doesn’t disturb others. One booth for every 8-10 seats, even at the cost of removing two desks.
What happens if I also open it to non-residents?
The obligations change. You need an access-controlled door separate from the routes to the rooms, a badge or expiring code, and desks bookable through the PMS. The administrative, tax and safety implications, including occupancy and escape routes, need checking with your own professional and accountant before the design stage.
