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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the importance for real estate organizations to measure portfolio space in a meaningful way, allowing occupancy planners to make aggressive recommendations to reduce under utilized space within a portfolio.

This paper takes the form of an office space characteristics study of nine global occupiers in four different industries, focusing on vacancy rate, density, space usage and gross versus rentable/usable square footage.

There is a disconnect between where many corporate real estate executives think they need to be on these measurements, where they think they are, and where they truly are when metrics are based on actuals, and not on targets. Also, most US occupiers are above the BOMA international density recommendation of 225 square feet per person. Per person and per seat space occupancy is lower in Europe and especially in Asia.

The paper contains suggestions on how and what portfolio spaces to measure, as well as a base for comparing major space characteristics to corporate peers. This information is valuable for helping a corporation “right size” its portfolio in occupancy planning, and provides a meaningful way for real estate executives to demonstrate support for overall corporate objectives such as cost efficiency.

This study is possibly the first ever published detailing such a large amount of office space (almost 42 million s.f. total). It provides corporate occupiers a framework for measuring their own portfolios, and a yardstick for comparison of space characteristics to others once that has been completed.

This article proposes a model for benchmarking tourism quality of life (QoL) that is practical and affordable to implement by communities of all sizes. The model is tested on a group of 30 mountain towns in the Appalachian region of the United States.

An existing model measuring resident QoL from Roanoke, Virginia, is discussed and a new model for tourist QoL is proposed. Both models employ secondary data from free sources to calculate a practical, affordable and quantifiable QoL index.

Analysis of the data indicates the Appalachian mountain town with the highest tourist QoL score is Lynchburg, Virginia, with a composite QoL index value of 128, followed closely by Charlottesville, Virginia, with an index of 126 (where an index of 100 = the US national average).

A tourist QoL model has practical value because it can be used by local policymakers to benchmark their region's QoL, make comparisons with other destinations, and ultimately, as a tool to help market their community – all using free and readily available data.

This case study adds value to the hospitality and tourism literature by sharing the Roanoke QoL model for the first time with the academic and practitioner community and extends its methods to propose how a tourist QoL model would work. It also addresses the research gap noted by Uysal et al. (2016) who observed a dearth of tourism research studies that utilize objective measures.

Office workspace is more than a place but one of the essential resources in business organizations. In recent years, research in office workspace management has become an increasingly important scholarly focus. However, there is a dearth of bibliometric studies to date on the subject. This study aims to explore a scientometric analysis of office workspace field.

The title/abstract/keyword search method was used to extract related papers from 1990 to 2018. A total of 1,670 papers published in Scopus were obtained and subjected to scientometric data analysis techniques via CiteSpace software.

The results revealed the active research institutions and countries, influential authors, important journals, representative references and research hotspots in this field.

While this study focused on office workspace management, the findings hold useful implications for the built environment in general and facility management in particular, being a sector that encompasses multiple disciplines involving building, office assets, people, processes and technology, which enable effective functioning of the built facilities.

This is probably the most comprehensive scientometric analysis of the office workspace field ever conducted. This study adds to the so far limited knowledge in the field and provides insights for future research.

Many organizations in Hong Kong have witnessed a reduction in average space usage due to high occupancy costs. New working practices (NWPs) are viewed as a reform tool to manage expensive real estate around the world. However, it is unclear whether NWPs influence office space usage in business organizations in Hong Kong. This study, therefore, aims to evaluate if the average space reduction in office firms is caused by the NWPs in the finance, insurance, real estate and business (FIREB) firms.

A total of 20 NWPs were initially derived from the extant literature. A questionnaire survey was conducted with listed FIREB firms in Hong Kong to assess the impact of the identified NWPs on space usage. The data collected from the questionnaire survey were analysed using descriptive, explorative factor analysis (EFA) and partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the effects of NWPs on average space usage.

Results revealed that four major NWP factors influence average space usage. Three of these factors, namely, “flexible arrangement”, “multitasking knowledge workers” and “teamwork and communication”, influence space usage positively. Even though the effect of the fourth factor “training and networking” was significant, it does not reflect a positive influence on space usage. Business organizations can focus more on the implementation of NWPs to cushion the effects of the high cost of occupancy.

The research provides new knowledge to the limited literature on the effect of NWPs in FIREB firms and enriches the growing body of international literature on how today’s competitive global business organizations should revisit their workplace strategies to accommodate the rising agile workforce and NWPs. The findings offer new insights into the ongoing debate on the impact of information and communication technology-enabled NWPs on space usage. From the real estate perspective, the findings should inform policymaking towards the better planning ahead of office properties to accommodate NWPs, helping Hong Kong to remain competitive as a key financial centre.