“I don’t know what buildings of the future will look like, but I know that buildings that don't have any people in them are unlikely to do well.”
This is a quote from a large commercial office owner we have the pleasure of calling one of our customers, and we couldn’t agree more. We believe this sentiment highlights a core challenge in today's commercial real estate market.
We're seeing a clear evolution towards a hospitality-driven model—from lifestyle centers to amenity-rich office spaces. With billions already invested and the broader hospitality segment projected to surpass $1 trillion by 20301, CRE urgently needs better ways to measure the ROI of these significant investments.
Historically, there’s been no reliable, objective metric for tracking the true value derived from user behavior in physical spaces. Hybrid work has pushed office owners to invest heavily in amenities in an effort to retain and attract customers. Yet, assessing the real impact of these investments remains elusive due to fragmented, anecdotal data.
The inability to measure this impact is why we’re proposing a vital new metric for commercial real estate: Engagement.
Borrowed from the digital marketing industry, where it's defined as "the level of interaction a user demonstrates with a brand, product, or service online, measured by actions like website visits, time spent, shares, comments, and purchases," the concept of Engagement has driven profound insights into digital ROI.
However, applying this directly to CRE falls short. Our 'product' isn't just a website; it's a physical environment. Therefore, we've redefined Engagement for CRE: a persistent, verifiable, and objective digital measure of physical interactions within a commercial asset. It's a digital representation of actual activity that captures how people interact with office spaces and services and what truly drives value for them.
Unlike subjective surveys or anecdotal observations, Engagement data must be:
This objective, persistent, and verifiable dataset empowers owners and operators to make smarter, data-driven decisions, that:
In our next Whiteboard session, we'll dive deeper into how Engagement is actually measured, exploring the three distinct tiers of interaction and the digital touchpoints that bring this powerful metric to life. Stay tuned!
