Meeting Rooms in 2025: Making Hybrid Work Really Work

1. Hybrid Work Isn’t a Buzzword Anymore – It’s the Baseline

Remember when hybrid work felt like a bold, new experiment? Now, just two years later, it’s become the norm for most organizations. According to a recent CBRE global survey, 92% of enterprise occupiers now have a formal hybrid program, a 30% increase since 2021.¹ Meanwhile, Kastle Systems’ office badge-swipe data shows average U.S. occupancy at 54% of pre-pandemic levels, with significant day-to-day fluctuations.²
Bottom line: the debate has moved from whether to do hybrid, to how to do it sustainably and efficiently.

Click here to learn how to optimize the use of your meeting rooms!

2. Mid‑Week Peaks, Monday/Friday Valleys

Hybrid patterns have settled into a recognizable rhythm:

• Tuesdays are now the new “Monday” – Density.io reports a 53 % peak utilization, the highest of any weekday.³

• Fridays are still almost empty, languishing at just 28 % utilization.³

• The most recent Kastle data shows a gulf of ~27 percentage points between Tuesday and Friday occupancy.²

For estates & facilities teams this means dynamic demand, not steady‑state averages: the same room can be overbooked mid‑week and sit idle by the weekend.

3. Why Calendar Data Still Lies

Our original 2023 article flagged that up to 80 % of meetings booked in a room never happened there. That stat hasn’t improved. Booking systems were built for a 9‑to‑5, in‑office world – not today’s last‑minute desk bookers and remote no‑shows.

Sensors + video analytics are now table stakes. If you don’t track actual occupancy, you can’t right‑size real estate or prove ROI on new rooms.

Synergy SKY Management Suite provides people‑count analytics direct from the video codec, so you can measure true utilization without extra hardware.

Our original 2023 article flagged that up to 80 % of meetings booked in a room never happened there. That stat hasn’t improved. Booking systems were built for a 9‑to‑5, in‑office world – not today’s last‑minute desk bookers and remote no‑shows.

Sensors + video analytics are now table stakes. If you don’t track actual occupancy, you can’t right‑size real estate or prove ROI on new rooms.

Synergy SKY Management Suite provides people‑count analytics direct from the video codec, so you can measure true utilisation without extra hardware.

5. Designing for the New Normal

1. Right‑size spaces – Use people‑count trends, not diary slots, to decide whether to split a 10‑seater into two huddle rooms.

2. Design for parity – Install dual‑screen layouts so remote participants are faces, not thumbnails.

3. Automate join & control – Room panels should light up green > amber > red automatically. No manual check‑ins.

4. Plan for peaks – Offer overflow “Zoom Booths” or flex rooms for Tuesday/Wednesday surges.

5. Treat video like a utility – If the camera fails, it’s a Sev 1; build monitoring into NOC dashboards.

6. How Synergy SKY Helps

• CONNECT gives legacy Cisco & Poly rooms the same single‑click join as laptop users, even for Teams or Google Meet.

• Analytics in Management Suite show real‑time head‑count, ghost meetings and no‑show percentages.

• Policy engine can auto‑release rooms if nobody turns up, freeing scarce capacity on peak days.

7. Key Takeaways

• Hybrid is here to stay, but occupancy still averages only ~50 % – meaning huge optimization potential.²

• Meeting rooms are more critical than ever for confidentiality, higher audio quality and equitable collaboration.

• The winners are organisations that measure, simplify and interoperate.
  
  

References

1. CBRE 2024‑2025 Global Workplace & Occupancy Insights, June 11 2025.

2. Kastle Systems swipe data, reported by Axios, Feb 6 2025.

3. Density.io Workplace Benchmark Report Q1 2025, Apr 8 2025.