Room booking: more rooms is rarely the right answer

What organisations are actually building

JLL's Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026, built on 84 organisations and 716 million square feet, records where space types are heading. Phone booths are increasing in 41 percent of portfolios, focus rooms in 30 percent and small meeting rooms in 29 percent, while private offices decline. The shortage is not boardrooms. It is places for one or two people to have a call without disturbing a floor.

Microsoft's 2025 Work Trend Index, covering 31,000 knowledge workers in 31 countries, explains the pressure: 57 percent of meetings are ad hoc, with no calendar invite at all. More than half of meeting demand never reaches the booking system that is supposed to plan for it.

Reservations are not attendance

A room booking tells you a room was claimed. It does not tell you that eight people used a room built for eight, or that one person took it for a video call. Until you know which of those happened, a request for more rooms cannot be answered with anything better than an opinion.

What iotspot adds to room booking

iotspot Room Booking handles the reservation, the calendar integration and the release of no-shows. iotspot meeting room displays and lobby screens capture the ad hoc half of the week at the door, which is the only place it can be captured. Room sensors and people count sensors record how many people were actually inside and for how long.

That combination turns the conversation. Instead of conceding to a request for more rooms, you convert three large rooms into six small ones with measured evidence behind the decision. iotspot Insights produces the before and after so the change is defensible.

All of it sits on the same iotspot platform as desk booking, parking and visitor management, on the same floor plans, in the same app.

On reliability

JLL discloses its sample and measures occupancy rather than reservations, which is why its figures survive a board paper. Microsoft's number is self-reported, so read it as a description of how the week feels rather than a count.

iotspot itself is ISO 27001 certified and 100 percent GDPR compliant, runs on European cloud infrastructure with European hardware, and stores no personal data. People count sensors return a number, not an identity.

Frequently asked questions about room booking