A Great Room for All

A new luxurious, hospitality inspired shared office environment encourages innovation for decision makers and grown-up startups.

The idea for Singapore based The Great Room began when its Co-founder and CEO Jaelle Ang worked on Chao Phraya Estate, one of Bangkok’s largest mixed use developments that encompass five-star hotels and branded residences. She saw first hand how the buzz of beautifully designed hospitality establishments could transform interior spaces. It led to the concept that the work environment should be as human as possible, sometimes encouraging contemplation while other times fostering collaboration.

“The Great Room is borne from wanting it all—a stubborn belief that work can and must be joyful and productive,” said Ang. “I envision The Great Room being a dominant brand in the premium shared workplace sector, endeared by people who want to work and live larger. This is the first time in decades that commercial real estate market is seeing massive disruption.”

After opening shared office spaces in Singapore and Bangkok, The Great Room entered the Hong Kong market in April 2019 with the launch of a 24,000 square foot location in One Taikoo Place, Quarry Bay. “Hong Kong is a very vibrant and exciting market for us,” Ang noted. “Many decision makers for the Asia-Pacific region reside here. We see winning Hong Kong as an important springboard for our expansion strategy across the region. In Hong Kong, we are focused on telling our brand story, building out with a few more locations, demonstrating superior unit economics, and the rest will come.”

Ang believes that Hong Kong’s recent and upcoming luxury hotel openings will bolster business, and hope to forge more partnerships. “People want more from their work and play journey now, and hotels are natural hub for power brokers to congregate and work,” Ang stated. “Regionally, our goal is to establish presence in key financial centres in Asia within the next three years.”

By focusing on the market segment that includes Fortune 500 companies, enterprises, SMEs and private equity houses, The Great Room leverages tenures that are up to two times longer than typical startup ones. “This segment is more value sensitive than price sensitive,” explained Ang. “It is the largest, growing the fastest and has the lowest penetration in Asia currently. People are curious, ambitious and would find themselves as easily attracted to a session of CEO media coaching as they are to rubbing shoulders with other power brokers at a whiskey tasting session.”

“We’ve currently got a lean team of five people in Hong Kong, with functional support from our team in Singapore and London,” Ang said. “We are gearing up to open two more locations in Hong Kong within the next 12 months.”