🕸️ So...What is a Ghost Booking?
A ghost booking is any reservation that exists on paper but not in reality.
They come in many forms:
🪑 Hot desks booked “just in case”
📅 Recurring team bookings no one turns up for
🐱 Assigned desks used once a week – because someone wanted to make sure that a framed picture of their cat always greeted them at “their” desk
🗓️ Meeting rooms that were booked for in-person events... then moved to Zoom without cancelling – or maybe with just a single person sitting in the room whilst everyone else “dials in”
They all add up to one thing:
A workplace that looks busy on a plan, but feels empty in reality.
🧠 Why Do Ghost Bookings Happen?
It’s not always (in fact, usually not) malicious – it's hard to design an office policy and booking system that works for people.
Here’s why ghost bookings persist:
🔁 Habit - People book out of routine, without thinking – and regardless of whether they are actually going to the office.
🔒 Scarcity mindset - If the system looks full, people hoard slots “just in case.”
😐 No perceived benefit – If no one checks or enforces bookings, why bother booking in the first place?
🪞 No feedback loop – Nothing happens when desks sit empty. No prompts. No cancellations. No reason to change.
😶🌫️ The Human Cost of a Half-Empty Office
You’ve made the effort.
You’ve come to the office, hoping for face time, energy, collaboration.
And instead?
Empty chairs. A sea of silence. Nobody you planned to see. It’s like the Marie Celeste 👻🚢.
It’s not just a mild inconvenience - it’s a morale killer that will drain the will of people to be in the office.
Ghost bookings quietly erode trust in the office as a valuable place to be, and that mandates to be in the office serve a meaningful purpose.
And when people lose that trust:
😑 They stop coming in “just in case the team shows up”
🙅♂️ In person collaboration and relationship building gets harder - teams miss each other entirely
😒 The office feels pointless, draining the buzz for those who are there
The workplace should feel alive, predictable, and worth it.
💸 Why It’s a Big Deal
Beyond the vibe check, ghost bookings create serious knock-on effects:
🤷♀️ Teams can’t plan their time or sit together – because either they don’t know where colleagues will be because they don’t know if the bookings are real, or they can’t find space because of all the reserved spaces that are never used
📉 Facilities teams make space decisions based on fiction
🪙 Budgets stay inflated because space looks used on paper
📊 Leadership overestimates demand, which blocks redesign, cost savings, or downsizing
And the data backs it up:
40% of booked desks go unused on a typical day
62% of employees say they still waste time looking for a desk despite having booking systems
Many orgs still plan for 1:1 desks, even when real hybrid use is far lower – especially when day by day usage is considered
✨ How to Banish the Ghosts (No Ouija Board Required)
You don’t need stricter rules (although adding some predictability to expectation can be useful!). You need better experience design. Real value from being in the office. You need to take the effort away from people – make the system help them, work for them – not the other way around.
📊 System Design
📱 Make booking tools simple, mobile-friendly and automated - removing the need for manual user inputs
🔔 Add check-in prompts and ghost-clearing notifications
Consider automating the experience - automatic, user based space assignment on arrival, not in advance
Team based booking, not individual based booking - find spaces for teams, not individuals
👥 Highlight when key team members, or entire teams, will be in so people show up when the people they need to see are in
🏢 Office Design
🔄 Use flexible spaces, going beyon “rooms and desks” that match how people actually collaborate
🛋️ Make the office match how different user groups work, matched to what you expect them to do in the office – and make sure the system helps them find what they need proactively – not reactively
🧭 Consider moving to a “neighbourhoods” model, rather than a “desk” based model. I mean, if people go to the office to see people – take the formality away. You aren’t boarding a flight – the office should encourage people to move around, work freely – but with the comfort of knowing they will be around the people the need to see.
📜 Policy Design
🧾 Reward honest booking behaviours – and explain why some people do/do not need permanent desks
👻 Remove the fear of losing a desk if it’s not booked weeks in advance
🗣️ Talk to teams - not everything needs to be automated - and not everything needs a bookin! Find out what users want and what will really help them. What could the booking system help them with – and learn when it interferes. Match this up again company office/estate goals and objectives.
The goal should not be to catch out ghost bookers. It should be to understand how to get a better experience for users, and more value out of time in the office.
It’s to make accuracy with bookings the easiest, best option.
🪦 Final Thoughts
Ghost bookings may sound like a Halloween gimmick - but they’re a year-round drain on collaboration, morale, and resources.
You don’t need to exorcise your floorplan.
Just rethink how you design your workplace experience and how to automate the booking experience, taking away the effort from users.
And if you’re ready to do that?
Let’s talk. 👋
