Remote Work Trends Are Rapidly Infiltrating Airport Spaces

25.08.2023 - 14:27 / skift.com / Delta Air Lines / Matthew Parsons

“We’re not a WeWork,” the boss of Delta Air Lines’ Sky Clubs once famously said, as the airline began capping the amount of time passengers could stay in its airport lounges.

That could be about to change.

Airports continue to transform as they keep up with new post-pandemic travel trends, including the rise of blended travel. Airport hotels, for example, are becoming more popular meeting venues for companies with geographically diverse teams.

But now co-working is set to feature more prominently, as flexible office platforms and lounge operators capitalize on corporate work-from-anywhere policies. And the number of flexible workspaces located in airports has already grown 83 percent year-on-year since the end of 2021, according to data and analytics platform CoworkIntel.

One of the biggest players, IWG, has just opened its second Spaces co-work venue at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, as part of the Lounge 1 redevelopment. There are six working areas, four meeting rooms and spaces for 100 people.

It’s designed for transfer passengers who need to work while they are waiting for connecting flights, as well as people working nearby. IWG said it had ambitious plans for growth and was delivering that by scaling up the variety of locations it operates.

To date it has nearly 50 hybrid workspaces in or close to airports across the world. That includes hubs including Los Angeles, London’s Heathrow, Berlin, Sydney and Tokyo, as well as Schiphol, but there are smaller locations like Geneva, Abu Dhabi, Accra, Munich and Bordeaux.

“We are seeing rapidly growing demand for hybrid working solutions with today’s worker wanting to stay productive no matter where they are,” said Mark Dixon, founder and CEO of IWG. “The Spaces Lounge at Schiphol Airport is a good example of the work we are doing to provide high quality hybrid workspaces where people need them.”

IWG plans to add 1,000 locations over the next year.

Rival WeWork is also keeping an eye on work-from-anywhere trends.

“We’ve seen a behavioral shift in where and when people work as the proliferation of workcations continues,” said a WeWork spokesperson. “We are seeing this trend contribute to the growth of our monthly subscription product, with All Access bookings growing 79 percent year-to-date and our pay-as-you-go product On Demand bookings growing 171 percent”.

It was also seeing the greatest demand for flexible workspace continue to come from major metropolitan areas which are closer to major hubs of transportation like airports.

Lounge operator Plaza Premium Group, meanwhile, recently launched “Their Patio” at Dubai International Airport, which combines the “work from anywhere” with “co-working space” concepts. “We see a behavioral switch from just