A meeting room in downtown Vancouver costs $30 an hour at our place, with no membership required. We are putting the number first because most of our competitors will not.

Go looking for hourly meeting space in this city and you will spend an afternoon filling in contact forms. Half the operators treat pricing as something to discuss on a sales call. That is fine if you are shopping for a five-year lease. It is useless if you have a client landing Thursday and you need a room for two hours.

Why hourly, and when it stops making sense

The math is not subtle. A private office with us runs $1,400 a month. If you need a professional room for client meetings twice a month, two hours at a time, that is four hours, or $120. You would be paying roughly thirteen times more for the office, and it would sit empty most of the month.

Hourly booking stops making sense at the point where you are in the room most days. If you are booking twenty hours a month every month, you are past the crossover and you should be looking at a dedicated desk or a private office instead. We will tell you that rather than let you rack up hourly charges, because a client on a monthly plan is worth more to us than a client who feels overcharged.

What $30 an hour includes

Everything in the room. There is no separate AV charge, no per-person fee, and no charge for coffee.

The room is a private boardroom that seats 10 without crowding. That is worth saying plainly, because capacity numbers in this industry are optimistic to the point of dishonesty. A room advertised for 10 that has eight chairs and no elbow room is a room you cannot run a real meeting in. Ours takes 10 people who each have space to open a laptop.

Inside you get a 4K display, a whiteboard, and an Owl 360-degree conference camera with the microphone array built in, so remote attendees hear the whole table instead of whoever is closest to a laptop. It works with Zoom, Teams and the rest without a setup call. Calling to anywhere in the US and Canada is unlimited and included.

The membership math, which is slightly absurd

Our membership is $15 a month. It cuts meeting room bookings to $15 an hour, half the standard rate.

So a single one-hour booking saves you $15, which is the entire monthly cost of the membership. Book the room once in a month and the membership has paid for itself exactly. Book it twice and you are ahead.

It also takes $10 off a daily Ultimate Desk, bringing it to $30 for the day instead of $40, and it includes the amenities and printing and scanning.

If you expect to use the room even occasionally, take the membership. We are aware this is a strange thing for us to point out. It is still the right advice, and we would rather you hear it from us than work it out afterward and feel taken.

What to check before you book a room anywhere

Five things separate a room that works from a room that wastes your morning, and only one of them is price.

Ask what the real capacity is, and how many chairs are actually in the room. Ask whether the AV requires a staff member to set it up, because if it does, you are dependent on that person being available at 9 on a Monday. Ask whether there is a minimum booking and what the increment is after it. Find out whether you need to be a member to book at all, since several downtown operators will not sell hourly time to non-members. And ask what happens if your meeting runs 20 minutes long, because the answer tells you a lot about how the operator treats people.

The one-hour minimum

We have a one-hour minimum and we are keeping it. Turning a boardroom over takes time, and a 15-minute booking costs us more to service than it earns. Charging for the hour is the honest version of that. The alternative is a low headline rate with a cleaning fee bolted on, which we are not going to do.

Who actually books it

Client meetings and pitches are the obvious use. Beyond those, the room gets booked for interviews, small training sessions and team workshops, and by students for study sessions, which is why we mention it on the booking page.

The category that has grown most is founders who run a company here without living here. If you hold a virtual office with us and you fly in twice a year, an hourly room is the whole of your Vancouver office footprint. You get a real boardroom for the meetings that need one, and you pay for four hours a year instead of carrying a lease for a room you are not in.

Common questions

Do I need to be a member to book?

No. The room is $30 an hour to anyone. Membership at $15 a month halves that rate, but it is optional.

How far ahead should I book?

Weekday mornings are the busiest, so give yourself a few days for those. Afternoons are usually available at shorter notice.

Is there a daily rate?

Yes, there are daily rates as well as hourly. If you are running a full-day workshop, ask us for the day rate rather than booking eight separate hours.

Can I get in outside business hours?

Evening and weekend access is possible and depends on the arrangement, so ask before you commit to a time with your attendees.

Where is it?

Downtown Vancouver. Full location and transit detail is on the meeting room page.

Book it

Pick your time on the meeting room rental page. If you have an unusual requirement, an all-day session, an early start, or a room setup you need changed, tell us what you need and we will confirm whether we can do it before you book.