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Desk booking
Desk booking is the reservation of a workplace for a defined period, usually through a floor plan or app, and typically confirmed by a check-in.
In short
Desk booking is the reservation of a specific workplace for a defined period – usually a day or half day – through a floor plan, a list or an app. It is the operational mechanism behind desk sharing: because desks are no longer personally assigned, they have to be allocated, and booking is how that allocation happens without anyone coordinating it manually.
How a booking works
An employee selects a location and date, sees which desks are free, filters by equipment or proximity to colleagues, and reserves one. On arrival the booking is confirmed by a check-in, by QR code, by geofence or manually. Without a check-in the desk is released after a grace period and becomes available again.
That release mechanism is what separates a booking system from a spreadsheet: it corrects the reservation that nobody honoured.
Why the check-in matters
A booking is an intention. A check-in is evidence. The gap between the two – the no-show rate – is both an everyday annoyance for employees who see a full floor plan and an empty floor, and a distortion in any occupancy figure derived from bookings alone.
Related terms
Desk booking is the transaction; hot desking and desk sharing describe the underlying workplace model; space management describes the model of the building that determines what is bookable in the first place.
From the definition to your own offices
Terminology is where an evaluation starts, not where it ends. Thirty minutes with the product open turns the concept into your floor plan.