FlySpaces takes off as first portal for business rentals

MANILA, Philippines - The first online search and booking engine for short-term rentals for businesses in Southeast Asia has been launched in the Philippines and aims to empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs), freelancers and entrepreneurs.

FlySpaces is an online platform for co-working offices, meeting rooms, conference rooms, short-term offices, function rooms, galleries, party venues, pop-up stores and other office, event and retail spaces.

 “Our objective is to truly empower SMEs and entrepreneurs by giving them flexibility without engaging in long term financial commitment with landlords,” FlySpaces chief executive officer Mario Berta said in an interview.

FlySpaces, a $200,000 investment, will not charge anything to its end-users and will earn through charging a commission to the merchants. “We hope to have a considerable amount of transactions a month and have a higher recurrent of distinct customers,” he added.

Services offered in the online platform include co-working spaces (P400 to P1, 600 per day), short-term offices (P500 to P3, 000 per day), training and workshops (P420 to P5, 200 per hour), conference and meeting rooms (P420 to P2, 240 per hour), and event spaces (P2, 500 to 14,000 per hour).

FlySpaces targets to have 200 partners by 2016 from the existing 40 partner companies which include Smart, Seda, Marimo Serviced Office, Bit Space, Acceler8, and V Office, among others.

Currently, FlySpaces has seven people in its staff and Berta said he aims to have 25 to 30 personnel for Southeast Asia until end of 2016. By December, FlySpaces will be fully opening in Manila, Makati, Taguig, Ortigas, Quezon City, Pampanga, Batangas and Cebu in the Philippines, as well as in Singapore.

Berta added he plans to reach and open new locations every three months but Manila will remain to be the operational headquarters of FlySpaces.

Despite its focus in the Southeast Asian region, FlySpaces is also looking at the possibility of entering the Australian market by December 2016.