Hot-desking nomads found in Dublin

Evert Bopp makes an inquiry on the Enterprise Ireland discussion list about temporary office facilities in Dublin, and it leads me to the monumental discovery - that I've been using the wrong search terms all along - Bedouin workspace, hot-desk, virtual office. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The reason I've found such a dearth of resources for nomadic entrepreneurs is because the correct term is, apparently, "serviced office". At least according to Pat Walsh of Sky Business Centres in Dublin. Providing meeting room facilities, temporary and virtual office accomodation their service is typically used by clients 'not requiring the shackles of a leasehold'. Check out the video where founder Pat Walsh explains -

"We look after everythings from a desk and chair, a telephone system, broadband, wifi, we pay their rates for them, their communal insurance, we supply catering, security, carparking so they can forget about those headaches and get on with running their business."

Apparently they've got a year round occupancy rate of 90% and they're interested in expanding through franchising. By the way, it's not obvious who did their virtual tours but perhaps they should commission the360co to re-do them!

Anyway, the main take away for me is to use "serviced office" as a search term in future - there are numerous results for Dublin alone.

UDPATE: Actually, the more I read the more I realize that, depending on which service provider you ask, there can be quite a difference between a virtual office and a serviced office package.

Technorati Tags: hot-desking, bedouin workspace, virtual office, serviced office

Comments

[Tom Corcoran]

Whatever you like to call, I can provide a similar service for qualifying start-up and early-stage companies at the ArcLabs Innovation Centre. This is located on WIT's west campus on the edge of Waterford city.

[John Handelaar]

Yeah, your correspondent is selling serviced office space, I'm guessing.

It's really nothing at all like what you were originally describing - it's a regular office but on an extremely short contract. All the 'services' lead out of that by necessity, really.

Which isn't to say it's not a valuable thing, just not remotely what you were talking about. (In fact they're so prevalent in the UK I'm surprised you've not seen them before.)

[Kieran Fegan]

For any of you requiring a 'UK' virtual identity, hot-desking or even incubation space; similar to Tom I can provide this for qualifying start-up and early-stage companies at the Greenshoots Innovation Centre in Newry Co. Down. Greenshoots is a joint venture between Newry Institute and the University of Ulster and is based on Newry Institute's Greenbank Campus. Newry is just over an hour from Dublin and will be even less upon completion of the cross border M1 project.

Any queries, drop me a line.

[MJ]

There is SUCH a difference between these things but I'm not surprised you were confused.

Serviced Office: it's an office. Many services provided. Relatively short term contracts but it's still a closed door office. Market leaders here would be Regus and the various enterprise parks in the North who cater for early-stage companies. With Mac-Sys we went from a 300 sq ft office to a 900 sq ft office within 4 months (and with a tripling of the costs) and finally settled on a 1500 sq ft office (for little more than we were paying for the 300...)

Virtual Office: no office, but you get a PA/telephone answering service, maildrop, office services, call forwarding and all for a small monthly fee. Many serviced offices offer this to their clients as well.

Bedouin Workspace: No office. Just a open plan workspace where the guy sitting next to you is not only not in your company, he's not even in your market. You have probably got all of the features of serviced and virtual offices but whereas the Serviced Office will generally give you workspace on a 3 month contract (wow, short!), the Bedouin office won't require a contract (it just may be cheaper to get one if you plan to use it a lot). Regus are responding to this need with some hot-desks in some of their centres but in Belfast it consists of a single sofa, beside a major thoroughfare, near the door (brrr!) in front of the tea, coffee and chocolate bar vending machines. Not the same thing at all!!!!

Our rationale for the Bedouin workspace is that you shouldn't need to pay for an office that you're not using 24x7 for papers and furniture storage.

[Evert]

Unbelievable, one post to a mailinglist leads to all this discussion.
There are plenty of companies offering virtual offices and short-term office leases. Neither si what I was looking for.
I had a meeting with an investor who had a stopover in Dublin. Rather than drag them all the way to Tipperary I just needed a conference room (with facilities) to sue for an afternoon. Nothing more and nothing less.
I am surprised (but than again not really) that Dublin airport doesn't provide these facilities.

I contacted Regus but they wanted to charhe me €50 per person fr an afternoon and did not provided wireless Internet access because it was "not secure".
The idiots....

I have received an email from Ciara in Sky Business center (www.skybc.ie) who provides exactly those facilities for a reasonable price....
Will report back on my experiences.

E.

[James Corbett]

Thanks Evert, looking forward to hearing how you got on. It would be nice to compile a matrix defining exactly what these various services offer.

[Peter & Derek]

Hi James. Many thanks for the link to our Virtual Tour Company! Every little helps... :O)Peter

[Oliver Wilson]

I am surprised that this virtual office thing is a surprise to everyone. The number one virtual office on the google search is www.dublinmaildrop.com and I have being using them for the past 6 months and they are providing an excellent service. I have a Dublin mailing address with mail forwarded to me in the UK on a daily basis, Dublin voicemail and fax numbers forwarded to email and all for only €850 per year. I used Regus but they are too big and pricey for me. So far so good.
Oliver