From space accessibility: 4 trends shaping the future of coworking

A few years ago, we had our own office in downtown Gothenburg. Three floors, a rooftop terrace, and so much sunshine that even we Gothenburgers managed to complain about it. We also complained about the work and the time it took to run an office—I cleaned the restrooms myself for nearly five years.

So we decided to move into Entreprenörsgatan . We took a larger space the ground floor—no sunlight—paying double the rent for half the space. And we love it!

We don’t have to worry about furniture, amenities, operations, or any of the other details. We’re moving to a place bustling both inside and outside our own office—with meeting rooms, event spaces, people, energy, and flexibility all around us.

From that perspective—both as supplier as a customer—we see four trends that are actually taking shape right now. And they all point in the same direction: coworking is shifting from being about space being about accessibility. Who can use which space, when, how, and through which digital platform?

Trend #1: Flex goes mainstream

Flex offices are essentially a step up from a private office for 1–10 people. They are offices that can be scaled as needed for companies with 10 to 30 employees—without a long-term traditional lease.

The reason for this growth is simple: companies no longer want to guess how much office space they’ll need down the line. Will the team have 25 or 40 people in two years? Will everyone be based in the same city? How much space now that hybrid work has become the norm?

The numbers speak for themselves. According to CBRE, the share of flexible space in European office portfolios has risen from 12% in 2024 to 21% in 2025, and is expected to reach 29% in 2027. The reasons are very concrete: 64% want to avoid major investments in offices, and 46% want to manage uncertainty regarding future needs

So Flex isn't just about renting a desk. It's about being able to grow, downsize, and adapt more quickly.

Trend #2: Managed office – flexibility for larger companies

The second trend is the rise of private offices and flexible workspaces. More large companies are seeking the same flexibility found in coworking spaces—but in a more private and business-oriented setting.

These could be private offices for 30–75 people or more. A private office, perhaps even located outside the coworking space itself, but where you still want to be able to use meeting rooms, lounges, event spaces, services, and the community. In short: we want our own space, but we don’t want to be on our own with everything around us.

Cushman & Wakefield reports a rise in demand for managed office space in Europe of just over 70% compared with the previous year.

So this is what the staircase looks like today:

1. Hot desk
2. Private office (1–10 people)
3. Flexible office (10–30 people)
4. Managed office (30+ people)

Back in 2018, we received a request from one of Sweden’s largest real estate companies to support their concept for move-in-ready offices with short-term leases. The challenge was clear: how do you manage quick move-ins and move-outs while ensuring the access control system is simple enough for tenants to manage on their own?

That is exactly the issue that becomes more and more significant the higher up the ladder you go.

Trend #3: Multi-location – members move between cities

A third trend for which we are seeing high demand, from both existing and potential customers, is the ability for members to move between different coworking spaces and properties.

A company may have its primary location in Gothenburg. That’s where the team is based, where private offices are located, and where day-to-day operations take place. But the same company has clients in Stockholm, partners in Malmö, or colleagues who travel between cities. In that case, the company wants to be able to offer its members access to lounge areas, desks, and bookable meeting rooms in multiple cities—without making them feel like outside visitors.

Among our customers today, it is more the rule than the exception to charge a higher premium for this. From a purely business perspective, it’s a relatively low-hanging fruit. However, this requires that access and access control system seamlessly across all sites, with as little manual intervention as possible and at a cost-effective investment for the customer or operator. 

Imagine a member being able to move freely between 30 different locations across Sweden—or even abroad—using the same app, without the operator having to manage keys, fobs codes in every city. That’s where the value lies—for both the member and the operator.

Trend #4: The app is becoming the new front desk

The fourth trend has been talked about for a long time, but is now being rolled out on a larger scale with clear benefits: membership apps that bring together bookings, payments, managed office services, events, multi-location management, and internal community features all in one place.

For members, this means simplicity—an app that brings together the entire office experience. For operators, it means revenue generation and a platform to build upon. Tools like OfficeRnd and Nexudus are good examples of this trend.

What really adds value is when unlocking can also be done directly within the same app. When booking, payment, and access are all brought together in one place, the membership app truly becomes the hub it’s meant to be—and we at Parakey are eager to be part of delivering that value.

That’s why we’ve built our SDK—so that partners and customers can integrate Parakey’s mobile unlocking directly into their own apps. Nexudus was the first to do so, which means that unlocking now takes place directly from Nexudus’s customers’ white-label apps. We’re seeing the same trend among coworking operators, where players like IOFFICE and Flexiwork (Alecta Fastigheter’s coworking concept) are integrating access into their own workflows.

The effect is clear:

• One app for everything: from signing a contract or making a reservation to unlocking a door—without having to switch between apps.
• A stronger brand: all interactions take place within the operator’s own app, which both increases app usage and strengthens the relationship with members.
• Faster onboarding: New members can get started right away when booking and access are all in one place.

It’s when the booking in the app also serves as the key that unlocks the door—automatically, at the right time, for the right person—that the member app truly becomes the new front desk. Not just because there’s an app, but because the app handles the entire check-in process.

The common thread: access is no longer a cost; it is an enabler

When you look at these four trends together, it becomes clear what they have in common. Flex, managed office, multi-location, and the member app all point to the same thing: users, the spaces bookings are constantly changing —and the choice of access control system not limit the ability to be flexible.

That’s where we at Parakey come in. We turn the smartphone a key. In practice, this means that users gain digital access, unlock secured areas with the smartphone administrators can manage access rights remotely or automatically—without keys or fobs.

Since our founding in 2014, we have grown to become supplier Nordic region’s largest supplier mobile access, with over 1,200 customers, 700,000 users, and more than 80 million unlocking transactions. What we’ve built is intentionally robust, secure, and flexible: it can enhance an existing access control system replace it entirely, and is designed to integrate with other services, where key management happens online and unlocking offline. Multi-location—which many still talk about as a future trend—is already a standard feature for us today.

What will prevail in the future?

The future of coworking won’t be won by whoever has the best the spaces. It will be won by whoever makes the spaces the easiest to use, book, share, and scale up or down.

This requires thinking of access as an integral part of the offering—not as an afterthought. When a new member needs to access a space in another city, when a managed office team needs to add ten people in a week, when the member app needs to unlock a door in Malmö for a user who usually works in Gothenburg—it simply has to work.

That’s the direction the industry is heading in. And that’s where we’re happy to be part of the process.