Daily average show rate? - what can we expect?

[Paz Chentnik]

I completely understand that everyone has different attendee rates. However I am wondering if there is an average show rate or a show rate that we should be striving for? Obviously understanding that not all 100% of our members will be in on the same day, what is the average show rate?

Thanks!!

[Mike Pihlman]

I count on 1/4 at any one time....

On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 12:45 PM, Paz Chentnik <p...@jamworkspace.com> wrote:

I completely understand that everyone has different attendee rates. However I am wondering if there is an average show rate or a show rate that we should be striving for? Obviously understanding that not all 100% of our members will be in on the same day, what is the average show rate?

Thanks!!

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[Paz Chentnik]

Thanks @altamonCowork

[Alex Linsker]

I think the maximum on any one day is the main number to be aware of as you plan for growth -- that way everybody always has room for them when they come in, and the room capacity within your city's zoning laws is never exceeded.

1/3rd (members and guests and visitors there at any one time as a percent of members) is high for any coworking place I've visited or worked at that has mostly memberships with open seating. Memberships with reserved desks can be as high as 100% or more. In comparison, I've heard that most gyms are 10%.

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[Erynn Nicole Lyster]

This is good to know! When we opened a year ago we made the assumption that we could sell our "part time" desks twice - for example at the time we had 12 PT desks and so therefore we felt we were maxed out at 24 part time members or else we would run the risk of not having enough desks on any given day. And this made us nervous --- what if everyone showed up at once!?

However, we have found this to NEVER be the case, and, in fact, have realized that we can sell these spots much more than twice. Right now we are technically "oversold" for part time desks -- and we still feel the space is empty half the time ...

This was good to know - in terms of we can sell more memberships -- but also a little deflating in that we have worked hard to build a great community and having our place feel empty a lot was a surprise ...

We have realized that when it comes to non-dedicated desks - whether they are part time or full time or flex passes - these people rarely show up for the full amount that they pay. On the other hand, as Alex says below, for reserved, dedicated desks, those people show up almost 100% of the time. So in the end we found having a good mix works out well so there is always a "buzz" in the office. We actually implemented "full time non-dedicated" memberships for this reason as we felt these people were likely to come to the office more often than their part time counterparts.

Moral of the story? After a year of learning we have built a great community with some awesome coworkers, but we realize our community can be much larger than anticipated and so we have lots more work to do :-)

~Erynn

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[Alex Hillman]

I had an entire response typed out with calculations for reverse-engineering our show rate...and then I remembered that it was worthless :)

To echo Alex and Erynn, there are two things you should be shooting for:

1 - a daily level of activity that feels better than being alone

2 - keeping an eye on OVERALL daily utilization to see if/when you need to start a waiting list on certain levels of membership.

For the first point, this is the hardest for most new coworking spaces, especially when they open without a community. 

One thing you may want to do is evaluate your membership model and make sure that it hasn't dis-incentivized coming in. Punchcards, for instance, seem convenient but put the emphasis on days as transactions. It makes people think "Do I want to use my day today?" instead of "If I don't go in today, I won't get the value I paid for". 

Andy Soell wrote more about this here: http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2014/06/how-i-turned-an-empty-coworking-space-into-a-coworking-community/

For the second point, like Erynn said, you'll be surprised at how wrong you can be about projecting attendance :) But, we've never been 100% full (on purpose), and here's how we did it. 

We keep a daily attendance for approximating our headcount historically. But more importantly than that, we're on the lookout for days where Indy Hall is getting close to full. 

We use waiting lists to slow down new memberships at the higher levels of utilization (full time and lite, for us). We have a finite number of full time spots, naturally, so that waiting list is pretty self explanatory. We clear that list first in, first out.

Sometimes, especially during our peak growth seasons, we'll also do a waiting list on lite membership, since it has the highest impact on availability. It might just be for a month or two, while activity stabilizes after growth. Once it's been a few weeks since we've had an "almost full" day, we'll open up new memberships again, first to the waiting list and then in general.

-Alex

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indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[Mike Pihlman]

I am always amazed that so many people sign up and don't come in (or, rather, come in infrequently).  I thought it was just us, but, it is nice to see others see the same thing.

  

[Paz Chentnik]

Thank you so much for everyone's responses. It truly helped us realize that we can way "over sell" our space and not worry about turning people away. :)