Customers work at a Spaces office. Spaces has opened its first coworking space center at 28 Tran Hung Dao, Hanoi City

Lars Wittig, vice chairman of sales at International Workplace Group (IWG) in ASEAN, Taiwan and South Korea, said that the first Hanoi-based center owned by Spaces, one of IWG’s eight brands, is the first in Asia, adding that the launch proved the great attractiveness of the Vietnamese market to the brand.

Spaces currently has 3,000 business venues across the world, supplying customers with convenient shared workspaces.

Wittig said that the Vietnamese market boasts great potential for growth. Prior to the launch of the Spaces center in Hanoi City, IWG had opened centers providing a coworking space service in Vietnam under the brand “Regus.”

Regus owns eight coworking space centers and one conference center in Vietnam, covering a combined floor area of 9,000 square meters.

The Spaces center in Hanoi, whose area is one-third as wide as the total area of Regus’ centers in Vietnam, may host 500 workers, Wittig said.

“The coworking space market in Vietnam is growing below expectations, while its potential is huge. IWG runs 25-35 centers in some countries in the region such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The figures are much higher than the 10 centers in Vietnam,” Wittig pointed out.

As Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines are considered fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia, IWG will raise the number of centers in Vietnam to match those in the Philippines within the next five or six years, according to Wittig.

Each worker can spend VND1.6 million on space rental fees at the Spaces center for three weeks, while the space rental fee at Regus centers is VND1.6 million per person per month. Besides this, customers will be given a membership card allowing them to work at all centers run by Spaces and Regus anywhere in the world.

IWG said that the coworking space currently accounts for a mere 2-3% of the total area of offices available for rent on the global market. However, some real estate firms and professional and financial service suppliers, including Jones Lang Lasalle, Colliers, KPMG, JP Morgan and Deloitte, forecast that the coworking space will expand rapidly, making up 30% of the total area of standard offices in the near future.

Vietnam is home to 20 brands supplying shared workspace services at 100 venues in the country, mainly in Hanoi and HCMC.