Here some of the takeaways from our conversation with Hubert Abt:

• According to him, investors now agree on the 200-300% growth forecast for Coworking and Flex Workspace in the upcoming years.
• New Work was among the most important lease takers in Poland in the 1st quarter of 2020 prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Shared economy and digitalisation were a clear trend before Covid-19. Now the virus has boosted the market to supersonic speed: “What usually happened in 3-5 years, now happens in 3 months, that’s a fact“
• Only 15-20% of New Work space is used at the moment and Hubert doesn’t expect that more than 60-70% of the tenants will come back to work to their facilities in the upcoming weeks due to the social distancing requests and the rise of home working. “No one can predict the future, though”, mentions.
• Hubert thinks that once the crisis management becomes better and better in Europe, the situation will normalise and the coworking demand will bounce back again and even accelerate.
• New Work has been considering satellite coworking offerings with partners in the suburbs, but hasn’t launched it so far. At the moment he is looking at what other players are doing, especially in the US.
• New Work is among the first coworking operators in Europe who tested coworking within Shopping Centres. They implemented a coworking space in a Shopping Centre in Ukraine but it didn’t work so far: “The business model of shopping centres still has to adjust to be able to accommodate coworking and flex workspace offerings”, mentions Hubert. He still believes in the model: “It will pick up ultimately, on higher less used floors for instance and bring new people in the shopping centres”.