Both options come with the benefit of offering a place for you, your team, and your clients to congregate. Choosing a meeting or conference room rental location can become a real chore depending on availability in the area you’ll be meeting. For instance, any town or city that has a major hotel chain will certainly have meeting rooms available. However, if they’re not booked weeks in advance, they usually cost an arm and leg for a simple one or two hour meeting, and hundreds for daily use.
There’s also an issue of professionalism. While hotel conference room meetings aren’t out of the ordinary, they aren’t the most professional environments for an official get-together, often being located nearby the hotel pool full of half-naked people. Then there’s added costs for tipping service staff which can quickly run up when your guests start ordering $20 drinks and expensive meals on your dime.
Of course, there are many facilities that offer meeting spaces as a service, but unless you know other business folk you can trust who’ve used them, there’s no telling how good the facility will be or how much privacy you and your attendees will have. Quality of add-on features can also be a concern, such as slow WiFi or poor sound-deadening material used in the conference areas offered.
Virtual office option = more flexibility
A virtual office won’t necessarily be a better option always, but usually is. The biggest benefit is cost and convenience. Also, they’re always located in an actual professional office environment, complete with privacy and free from interuption.
Flawless amenities
Since a virtual office is an actual office in a commercial building, you have nothing to worry about in terms of unwanted interruptions and poor quality amenities such as slow WiFi or printers, and fax machines with low toner or ten-year-old display monitors.
Multiple worldwide locations
The real benefit of a virtual office for meetings comes down to flexibility. Most businesses operating mostly in the cloud don’t normally do business twice in the same place. You may need to meet with your physical staff in Denver one week, then jet off to meet your European staff in London or Paris the next. When you choose a virtual office provider who offers flexible location options, you gain access to ALL their worldwide offices and conference area.
In most cases, you’ll need to pay a rental fee, just as you would elsewhere. However, most will offer discounts if you currently rent a virtual office with them. Best, Virtual Reception and other calling services that are included can help coordinate a successful meeting and take care of external details such as catering.
Real meeting rooms in professional corporate atmosphere
A virtual office allows for the option to break off into different teams during a meeting, using the technology and space offered in the virtual office. Other conference facilities may offer similar options to a virtual office conference area, but will always charge more for the same or less service options.
Hotels often take advantage of the convenience offered by housing your staff in the same area you’ll be meeting in. Dedicated conference service companies also need to charge more, unless they offer additional services such as a virtual office.
The fact is, when considering most businesses can benefit from renting a virtual office to have a professional business address, it only makes sense to consider using one for your meeting and conferences too.