You know you’re desperate for some good news, when you get excited about a press release. Just yesterday, United Airlines announced a truly innovative concept: bundling meeting and work space with flights. A sign that large travel companies such as United, that rely on lucrative business travelers, are needing to get more creative.
Through a program called Team Together, Peerspace will offer companies tiered packages starting at $1,500* per month that include United roundtrip flights, short-term workspace rentals and unique collaborative spaces for employees to gather in smaller, more agile work environments.
(*$1500 for the ‘Start Up’ package includes space rental only. Packages including United flights start at $5,000.)
Why Is This A Big Deal?
Well, it’s not only vindicating for all those haters that tell me Coworkaholic isn’t a “travel” blog. 🤣 But, I digress. This is a big, big deal because it offers a preview of what the future of business travel is going to look like. Not just in the short term, but for the foreseeable future. Business travel has essentially stopped in its tracks. But, companies such as Google are starting to view their offices as places for employee “on sites”. Offices no longer for day to day tasks, but essential for meetings, strategy and collaboration.
According to a study by Peerspace which in part inspired the initiative, 80 percent of respondents working at companies with more than 100 people reported that COVID-19 has positively changed their perception of remote work. In addition, more than 60 percent of employees indicated that their current work policy provides the option to work remotely indefinitely.
No different than many other platforms we’ve reviewed and talked about (Deskpass, Coworker.com, Proximity) Peerspace has nearly 20,000 creative spaces in 1,800 cities in the United States, including in United’s hub cities, with indoor and outdoor spaces ranging from neighborhood galleries to hidden rooftops.
Organizations are quickly finding that task based work: email, creative design, coding and more administrative functions can easily take place at home. What they are struggling with is what many in coworking call “accelerated serendipity”. The magic of what happens when people are in a space together.
Business Travel Will Come Back, But Not Like We Previously Knew It
A lot of business travel was centered around massive conferences with tens of thousands of people. With those types of events not happening until at least 2022, we’re going to see a shift in the type of employees that will be hitting the road for work.
“We built Peerspace so that groups could come together in inspiring locations to do their best work. While COVID has changed many things, our research shows that the need for face-to-face collaboration is still very real,” said Eric Shoup, CEO at Peerspace. “As companies continue to embrace remote-first work, Peerspace wants to help them solve the challenge of how to meet in person safely and affordably. We’re excited to work with United on this initiative to seamlessly connect teams when and where they need it the most.”
With most white collar workers, set up to work from home, many who used to simply walk down the hallway to a meeting, might find themselves boarding a flight instead. “As good as technology has been at allowing us to connect virtually over the past few months, it’s no substitute for in-person, human interactions,” said Janet Lamkin, Senior Vice President at United Airlines. “Demand for business travel is returning in new ways and our relationship with Peerspace provides some employers with even more flexibility as they move towards getting their employees back together in a safe and cost-effective way.”
This all tells me that road warriors will see a decrease in number of trips they take, there’s likely an increase in total number of employees that will travel at least once throughout the year.
The post Flights + Coworking Bundles Are Coming! United Airlines Partners with Peerspace to Bundle Flights & Work Spaces was first published on Coworkaholic.