Desk booking tells you intent. It does not tell you occupancy.

The gap has a measurement behind it

JLL's Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026, built on 84 organisations and 716 million square feet across six regions, puts global office utilisation at 56 percent against a target of 74 percent. Advanced Workplace Associates measured 55 offices, roughly 68,000 employees, in 19 countries and 35 cities using sensors rather than surveys. It found average office attendance of 34 percent and average desk utilisation of 55 percent.

Both organisations are credible. They are answering different questions. Attendance asks how many people came in. Utilisation asks how hard the space worked while they were there. A booking sits in neither column, because a desk that is reserved and never touched still reads as full.

Why the difference costs money

A booking system that shows 80 percent reserved and a sensor layer that shows 45 percent occupied will produce two entirely different lease decisions. JLL also reports that 90 percent of organisations now feed utilisation data straight into space planning, up from 70 percent a year earlier. The organisations closing the gap are not better at guessing. They stopped guessing.

What iotspot adds on top of desk booking

iotspot Desk Booking gives employees a seat, a floor plan and a colleague to sit next to. iotspot Insights adds the layer underneath it: measured use per desk, zone, floor and hour, on the same floor plans you already configured. The delta between what was booked and what was used is usually the whole business case, and it is generated from a system you already run.

Because desk booking, room booking, parking, visitor management, climate and reporting sit on one iotspot platform, that comparison needs no integration project and no second app for employees to learn.

On reliability

iotspot is ISO 27001 certified and 100 percent GDPR compliant. The platform runs on European cloud infrastructure with European hardware, and no personal data is stored. Occupancy insight is anonymised and aggregated by design rather than by a setting someone has to remember, which is why the output answers questions about space and never about a person.

JLL and AWA both disclose their samples and both measure rather than survey. Apply that same test to any occupancy figure you are asked to defend, including your own.

Frequently asked questions about desk booking