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WeWork has been grabbing headlines, wheter for its bold coworking strategy, innovation, and the ongoing financial challenges. However, behind the global attention, Karen Scarpetta, WeWork's CEO for Spanish Latam, revealed in an exclusive interview with the REsource team that the brand's performance in Latin America is on the rise. The company is capitalizing on unique opportunities in the region, such as the surge in businesses moving to Mexico due to Nearshoring.
According to the executive, the company's service, blending technology with a personalized office model, offering flexible spaces and contracts tailored to the productive and financial needs of businesses, allows tenants to secure physical space for their companies 30% faster than traditional offices.
In the past two years, as Karen recounts, WeWork has focused on seizing investment opportunities in Latin America, showing "promising signs of economic recovery, embracing hybrid work models, and a renewed focus on productivity." The executive highlighted that with a focus on the local situation, WeWork's revenues in the region grew by 37% at the end of the second quarter of 2023 compared to the previous period.
"Brazil and Mexico are the most relevant markets in Latin America, but in 2023, we celebrated historic occupancy levels in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina," explained WeWork's Spanish Latam CEO.
Data from the SiiLA Market Analytics platform reveals that WeWork is strategically leasing high-end office buildings, often as the sole tenant of the project, in different cities mapped by the platform.
In Mexico, the company is responsible for occupying more than 250,000 square meters of corporate buildings, considering only A+ and A-grade standards. In Brazil, it jumped from less than 50,000 square meters in 2018 to around 120,000 square meters currently occupied, also considering only high-end developments (Classes A+ and A), including iconic properties such as BFC - Brazilian Financial Center, in Paulista Avenue, CENU - Centro Empresarial Nações Unidas - Torre Norte and Complexo JK, all three in São Paulo, and Torre Almirante in Rio de Janeiro In Colombia, SiiLA's data indicates an occupancy of nearly 100,000 square meters, also in large-scale developments.
Karen explains that each region in Latin America presents specific trends. In Bogotá, Colombia, for example, occupancy has been driven by the absence of new corporate projects in the city, a trend since 2019. In São Paulo, Brazil, the challenge has been the limited availability of spaces. In places like Mexico City, the strategy involves selecting strategic locations in a market with significant deliveries of new inventory.
However, in all locations, the WeWork strategy is to seize opportunities, according to the executive, whether in markets with a shortage or excess of corporate floor stock, high or low demand, as long as there is an opportunity to build communities. "We have to keep an eye on behavioral trends and use technology to understand them and develop solutions and products that meet these emerging needs," explained Karen.
The flexibility of spaces and contracts has been particularly successful in Mexico and Brazil. One difference between these markets is that, in Brazil, there is a lot of "capillarity," meaning extensive and effective coverage that allows customers to use different spaces, often changing the center of operations according to their needs. In Mexico, it is common for companies to choose a location, decide to establish themselves, and centralize their operations.
"In the end, the most important thing for each company is to focus on what it needs to achieve results, and in this process, we, as experts in workspace development, can stay at the forefront and go beyond, providing some companies with what they haven't realized they need," concluded Karen.
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