THE world’s largest serviced office provider has set up in Perth, weeks ahead of its planned moves into Sydney and Melbourne
THE world’s largest serviced office provider has set up in Perth, weeks ahead of its planned moves into Sydney and Melbourne.
Regus vice president sales and marketing Asia Pacific Paul Boldy said the company had planned to open its first Australian offices virtually simultaneously in Melbourne and Sydney. However, a vacant floor, complete with mezzanine level, at 221 St Georges Terrace proved too tempting.
Mr Boldy said the Perth acquisition was unusual for Regus because it was already fitted out.
“Normally the company takes an A grade office building and buys the highest floor it can get,” he said.
The company normally looks for buildings under construction or with completely bare floors. It then conducts a ‘Regus’ fitout which includes the fitting of a false floor, the installation of extra power points, phone points and the like and demountable walls.
Nearly all Regus centres are also fitted for video conferencing.
Mr Boldy said demountable walls allowed clients to make their office larger as their businesses grew.
Because the Perth building is already established, it will only get a telecommunications upgrade.
Mr Boldy said serviced offices could make things easier for managers and save clients up to 66 per cent on office service fees.
“We offer instant offices,” he said.
“Companies coming in don’t have to worry about hiring secretaries or receptionists and when we bill the client, we only give them one bill.”
Mr Boldy said Regus operated on a ‘hotel’ basis in its 290 buildings worldwide. A Regus client in Australia can, for example, check in to a Regus building in Holland and conduct business there.
“The standards are similar around the world. We conduct phone and personal caller audits of each
centre to check the service standards,” Mr Boldy said.
The company, traditionally regarded a European power, is embarking on a major expansion through the Asia Pacific region because its customers wanted to be able to deal with Regus only.
“We’re going from zero to sixteen buildings in the Asia Pacific region this year,” Mr Boldy said.
“In the US we are opening eighty centres next year. We already have forty to fifty there.
“The three new countries we are concentrating on in Asia are Indonesia, Taiwan and Korea. The rest of our investment is in Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.”
Perth is a boon for the company because it is so much closer to its Asian operations than Sydney or Melbourne.
“We also have an experienced sales guy based in Perth,” Mr Boldy said.
Regus WA corporate account manager Warrick Welsh said the company’s presence in Perth meant exporters only had to deal with one person to book their office needs on overseas trips.
“We’re also working towards pulling a group of small office home office businesses together,” he said.
“We can help increase their purchasing power through forming a group.”
