What Is Online Space Booking?

An online space booking system makes reserving meeting spaces at corporate facilities fast and easy. It streamlines the process of managing shared spaces by giving users the power to search for rooms, check availability, make bookings, order catering and equipment, and complete payments on their own. They can check availability in real time and manage their own bookings anywhere there’s Internet access.

This self-service approach eliminates unnecessary administration, reduces errors like double bookings, and improves efficiency by doing away with outdated spreadsheets and back-and-forth communications. An online space booking system gives you back valuable time in your workday, plus the easy user experience encourages people to come into the office and use the space.

To demonstrate the ease of online space booking software and how it can transform the reservation experience at your organization, let’s explore a hypothetical scenario:

It’s team building time! You’ve been tasked with making arrangements for bringing everyone together onsite to connect in person. It’s an all-day event, so lunch will be provided. There are two ways you can make this booking – the easy way or the hard way. Well, maybe “the hard way” is too harsh a term. We’ll just call it “the traditional way.”

The Traditional Way. First, you need to see what spaces are available to book on the day of your event. You submit a booking request to Becky, the person who manages office real estate. Unfortunately, Becky is busy when she receives your request and can’t get to it right away.

While you’re waiting for Becky to confirm availability, you start making food arrangements. There are 12 people on your team, and you know picking lunch options that will please them all is going to be tough. So, you email everyone to ask what they want. Problem solved, right? Not so fast. Tom has a peanut allergy, Rashaad is on keto, and Alice is a vegan. Hmm.

While you mull over what to do about lunch, Becky finally gets back to you with bad news – the room you want to book isn’t available on the day you need it. Luckily, there’s a second, similarly sized space you can have. Becky asks you to complete a new booking request and you’re ready to roll…

…until Erikah reminds you she needs to work remotely that day to have her air conditioning fixed. She told you this ahead of time, but it slipped your mind in the chaos of booking. She’ll come into the office after the repairs are finished, but in the meantime, she’ll have to join remotely. Does the room you’ve booked have the necessary A/V equipment to make that possible? No? Back to Becky you go to submit yet another booking request for a different room.

By now, you’re flustered and frustrated. And lunch still hasn’t been arranged. What was supposed to be a fun team building event has turned into more work for you. Manual booking processes are time consuming and can discourage people from ever reserving shared spaces. It’s just too much trouble.

Now let’s look at the same scenario using online space booking software, a.k.a. “the easy way.”

The Easy Way. Right after you set the date of the team building event, you pull up your organization’s online space booking portal. Instantly, you can see all rooms available on that date along with details like capacity, furniture, and A/V equipment. You make your selection, enter information about the meeting, including catering needs (more on that below), and officially book the space within minutes.

Now back to catering. After you reserve the room, you pull up a menu with pictures and detailed descriptions that make it easy to give everyone what they want according to their dietary needs and preferences. You make your meal selections and add delivery instructions for the caterer. Once the order is final, you complete payment directly within the portal. A few seconds later, you get an automated confirmation email you can continue to reference until the day of the event.

All done! The event is booked, lunch is served, and everyone is happy without you having to make any phone calls, fill out any paperwork, or write any emails.

Ungerboeck works closely with corporate facilities and venues all over the world, many of which are beginning to go back to the office at least a few days a week. We understand that events and meeting facilities are important factors in coaxing people to return. From onboarding sessions to client presentations, or even simple opportunities for employee collaboration, all organizations require functional meeting spaces, conference rooms, and other shared spaces.

Key clients and stakeholders can also take advantage of Ungerboeck’s online space booking system. Some companies offer their office space as an incentive to their best clients, who can then use it to host their own corporate events and meetings. Ungerboeck Online Space Booking can be configured to give external guests restricted access to your company’s booking portal. External users can then check availability and make room bookings without affecting any of your internal meetings and events.

The COVID-19 pandemic revolutionized the way people work worldwide. Remote and hybrid work models are likely here to stay, despite the eased restrictions in most countries. While there are many pros for returning to the office, it’s important for companies to find new ways to encourage team collaboration no matter where their workforce is located. Making it easy to book an onsite space is a great way to cater to that newfound flexibility.