A 140-Seat Coworking Space: 38 Members Did Not Renew After 19 People Fell Ill in Two Weeks
Last updated: 6 Sep 2026 | 10 Views |
COVID-19 disinfection sprayer 2026 for coworking spaces and serviced offices
A 140-Seat Coworking Space: 38 Members Did Not Renew After 19 People Fell Ill in Two Weeks
Why a floor everyone uses and nobody owns is the hardest office to manage.
A coworking space is where people from sixty-odd companies use the same desks, the same meeting rooms and the same bathrooms, and nobody knows who sat at this desk yesterday. This is what happened at one space in Asok, Bangkok, and why thirty-eight members did not renew.
A coworking space has a problem a single-company office does not. In a company office, when somebody falls ill, HR knows who sits near whom, can notify them, and can send people home to work. In a coworking space nobody has that authority over members who come from sixty different companies.
Most operators clean well: hot desks wiped every morning, meeting rooms wiped after use, pantry glassware washed, carpets vacuumed. All correct, and all surface work — while the air on a 250-square-metre open floor used continuously by a hundred and forty people for twelve hours a day is never addressed at all.
What follows is the whole story: the first week, the thirty-eight members who did not renew, and the change that stopped it. At the centre of it is the AIROFOG U260 ULV cold fogger, a German-engineered machine producing 15-30 micron droplets.
The story
An open floor shared by people from 60-plus companies
Kittipong has run a coworking space in Asok for four years. Two hundred and fifty square metres with seventy hot desks, twelve private offices, four meeting rooms, one pantry and four phone booths — a capacity of about a hundred and forty people.
Members come from more than sixty companies plus a number of freelancers. Many are monthly hot-desk members, which means they sit somewhere different every day, and nobody knows who sat at this desk yesterday.
The space is on the ninth floor of an office building. The windows are fixed glass, and the air conditioning belongs to the building, circulating the whole floor as one loop from eight in the morning until eight at night.
The densest point is not the hot desks. It is the pantry at lunchtime, where thirty to forty people heat food, eat and talk in twenty square metres — with nobody wearing a mask, because they are eating.
Two weeks, 19 people ill at once
It began with a member posting in the space's LINE group that they had fallen ill and had been in every day the previous week — a message posted in good faith.
Within a week nine more members posted the same thing in the same group, and within two weeks the number reported there reached nineteen.
The LINE group, previously used for booking meeting rooms, became a thread about this within two days. Members asked directly what the space was doing, and some posted that they were considering moving.
Kittipong replied that the cleaning team wiped the desks every morning and there was sanitiser at every point. True, and it did not answer the question they were asking at all.
Thirty-eight members who did not renew
The following month, thirty-eight members did not renew — mostly monthly hot-deskers who moved to another space or went back to working from home.
At an average of 6,500 baht a month each, that is about 247,000 baht of recurring revenue gone. For a coworking space carrying a fixed lease every month, that eats the entire margin.
Two client companies renting private offices also downsized from six-seat rooms to four-seat rooms, keeping some staff working from home.
And in a business where new members come mostly from word of mouth and reviews, a LINE thread with nineteen members reporting illness kept being retold in the local startup community for months.
What the competing space had written on its pricing page
Kittipong looked at the website of another coworking space two BTS stations away and saw something he did not have. On its pricing page was a line stating that the whole space was fogged every night after closing, naming the type of machine used.
He rang them as a fellow operator and learned they used a ULV fogger across the whole floor every night after eight, that it did not take long, and that their own housekeeping team did it.
That was the gap. He had a very good surface-cleaning team and nothing at all managing the air on a floor where people from sixty-odd companies breathe together for twelve hours a day.
What the space needed was a machine that could fog 250 square metres after closing, that would not damage the computers and equipment members leave on their desks, and that would reach the pantry, the phone booths and the meeting rooms — the points that are genuinely dense.
What it actually costs
A space has none of the authority HR has over employees
In a company office HR can send people home, notify those sitting nearby, and knows who sits where. A coworking space has neither that authority nor that information about members from sixty-odd companies.
Hot-desking makes tracing impossible
Hot-desk members sit somewhere different every day. There is no way to know who sat where yesterday. The only thing the space genuinely controls is the state of the floor before people arrive the next morning.
Monthly members can leave at once with no notice
Unlike an office lease tied for a year, coworking members can end at month's end. Thirty-eight non-renewals hit in a single month — about 247,000 baht of recurring revenue.
The space's LINE group becomes a public forum instantly
A group set up for booking meeting rooms became a thread about illness within two days, and the story kept circulating in the local startup community for months.
Why the usual fixes fail
Wiping hot desks every morning
Wiping desks every morning is a correct standard and does address what hands touch. But it happens before opening, and does nothing about the air during the twelve hours a hundred and forty people are using the floor.
Sanitiser at every point
Sanitiser helps with contact transmission and reassures members who see it. It has no relationship to what people breathe on an open floor sharing the building's air loop.
Asking ill members to stay home
A space can ask but cannot require, and many members are freelancers or small startups with no sick leave. Staying home means no income for them.
Reducing seats and spacing desks apart
Cutting hot desks cuts revenue per square metre immediately — the number this business lives on — and on an open floor with central air conditioning, fine aerosol still travels throughout with the airflow.
Asking building management for more fresh air intake
The air system belongs to the building. A single tenant has very little leverage; a request takes months and usually ends with the answer that the system was designed this way for the whole tower.
What a shared floor actually needs
The requirement is not more frequent desk wiping. It is a treatment aimed at the volume of air across the whole floor, including the pantry, meeting rooms and phone booths, that runs every night after closing without disturbing members.
That is exactly what ULV cold fogging is designed for. ULV, ultra-low volume, means the machine breaks disinfectant into droplets fine enough that the output behaves more like fog than spray. The mist stays airborne long enough to spread across the floor, then settles evenly on every surface, including the vents and ceiling.
The machine Kittipong's space chose is the AIROFOG U260: a German-engineered ULV cold fogger with an 800-watt motor and an adjustable nozzle producing 15-30 micron droplets, running on water plus the disinfectant the space selects.
10 reasons the AIROFOG U260 solves it
1. 15-30 micron droplets cover a whole open floor
A 250-square-metre open floor is one body of air. Fogging treats the space the same way the problem spreads through it — across the whole floor — instead of wiping seventy desks one at a time.
2. It handles the pantry, which is the genuinely dense point
A twenty-square-metre pantry where thirty to forty people eat and talk at lunchtime with no masks on is the densest point in the space. Fogging treats the whole room in a few minutes.
3. It reaches the phone booths, small sealed boxes nobody thinks about
A phone booth is a one- to two-square-metre sealed box where someone talks continuously for half an hour and then the next person walks straight in, with no ventilation at all. Fogging covers every booth at once.
4. It runs after eight at night when the floor is empty
The space closes at eight and the floor sits empty for twelve hours. Fogging uses a small part of that, so members are not disturbed for a single minute.
5. An 800-watt motor covers the whole space in one round
One machine covers the open floor, twelve private offices, four meeting rooms, the pantry and the phone booths. One housekeeping team finishes it in a single round.
6. The adjustable nozzle is safe around equipment members leave behind
Private office members often leave monitors, computers and equipment on their desks. A drier nozzle setting lets you fog without damaging members' property — a liability question a space has to take seriously.
7. It runs on a low-odour product members will not notice next morning
The U260 is a delivery system, not a chemical lock-in. The space can choose a low-odour or odourless solution, which matters greatly for a place people sit and work in all day.
8. The space's own housekeeping team can run it
No contractor every night. The team already cleaning after closing simply adds the fogging step. They learn it in an afternoon.
9. It is the same class of equipment hospitals use
The U260 was designed for COVID-19 disinfection and is used in hospital and laboratory settings. For a space answering members and private-office clients, that provenance carries weight.
10. You can put it on your pricing page and answer in the LINE group instantly
A space that fogs every night can state it on its pricing and sign-up pages, show the log, and answer questions in the members' group with facts — which is exactly what competitors are already using to win members.
Before and after
Before
- Surface cleaning only — desks wiped each morning, meeting rooms wiped after use
- Central air vents, ceiling, pantry and phone booths never disinfected
- A 250 sqm open floor used by people from 60-plus companies for 12 hours a day
- 19 members reported illness in the LINE group within two weeks
- 38 members did not renew, about 247,000 baht of recurring monthly revenue
- 2 private-office clients downsized their rooms
After
- ULV fogging of the whole space every night after the eight o'clock close
- Coverage of the open floor, private offices, meeting rooms, pantry and every phone booth
- An additional short pantry pass after lunch, the densest point of the day
- No further illness cluster in the space in the following year
- The disinfection procedure written on the pricing and sign-up pages
- Membership back to full within five months, with new members citing this as their reason
How we get you started, in 3 steps
1. Look at the actual space, not just the seat count
Floor area and ceiling height, where the building system's vents sit, how many meeting rooms and phone booths, pantry size and how many people use it at lunch, and what time you really close. Those five things decide the route and the timing. Send us the floor plan.
2. Install the machine and train the housekeeping team
We deliver the U260 with the nozzle set dry enough for a space with members' equipment left out, the correct dilution for the low-odour product you choose, and a route mapped to your layout. Training takes an afternoon.
3. Fit it into the night cleaning round you already run
The routine that works is boring and repeatable: fog the whole space every night after closing, plus a short pantry pass after lunch. Once it is in the night cleaning round it becomes something you can sell on your pricing page.
What a customer says
“When members asked in the LINE group what the space was doing, all I could say was that we wipe desks every morning and have sanitiser everywhere — which did not answer them at all, and that month we lost thirty-eight members. Now we fog the whole space every night after closing, plus the pantry after lunch because that is where people are densest. It is on our pricing page, and several new members have told me that is why they picked us.”
Kittipong — Coworking space operator, Asok, Bangkok
Why a space everyone uses and nobody owns is hardest to manage
In a single-company office responsibility is clear. HR knows who sits where, can send people home, can notify those nearby, and sets policy for its own employees.
In a coworking space that authority does not exist. Members come from sixty-odd companies with their own separate policies. The space can ask for cooperation but cannot require it, and has no right to anyone's health information.
Hot-desking makes retrospective tracing impossible, because people deliberately sit somewhere different every day — that is a selling point of the format, not a flaw.
When a space can neither control behaviour nor trace contacts, the only thing it genuinely controls is the state of the space itself before the next group arrives in the morning. That makes air management the one tool actually in the operator's hands.
What 15 to 30 microns actually means in practice
Droplet size is the specification that decides whether a machine solves this problem or merely makes things wet. Below roughly 10 microns, droplets are so light they can drift away before doing useful work. Above about 50 microns they behave like spray: they fall fast, and they wet the equipment members left on their desks.
The 15-30 micron band is the working range. Droplets stay airborne long enough to spread across the floor's volume and reach the ceiling and vents, then settle as a thin, even, fast-drying film. Everything is completely dry by morning.
It is also why an adjustable nozzle matters more than tank size. A private office with a member's monitor and computer needs a drier setting than a tiled pantry. Adjusting the nozzle gets you both from one machine.
For a coworking space the practical test is simple: next morning the desks should show no water marks, members' monitors should not be fogged, and the ceiling above the pantry and inside the phone booths should genuinely have been treated.
Frequently asked questions
Will equipment members leave on their desks be damaged?
No, with the nozzle set dry enough. ULV cold fogging at 15-30 microns leaves a very thin film that dries by itself within minutes. We configure it for a space with members' equipment left out at installation.
How long does a 250 square metre space take?
Fogging the whole space does not take long with a machine at this power, plus a closed-space period — and if you fog after the eight o'clock close, that can simply be overnight.
Should the pantry be fogged more often than the rest?
Yes. It is the densest point and nobody wears a mask there because they are eating. We recommend a short additional pantry pass after lunch on top of the nightly round.
Should phone booths be fogged too?
Strongly recommended. A phone booth is a small sealed box where one person talks continuously and the next walks straight in, with no ventilation at all — and each booth takes only seconds.
Can our housekeeping team run it?
Yes. The team already cleaning after closing simply adds the fogging step. We train them at handover — it takes an afternoon.
Will members notice a smell in the morning?
That depends on the product chosen. We recommend low-odour or odourless solutions for workspaces, and fogging at night leaves several hours before members arrive.
How often should a coworking space fog?
The whole space every night after closing, plus a short pantry pass after lunch, and meeting rooms after large meetings. Consistency matters far more than intensity.
What does it cost per month?
The consumables are water and disinfectant, and ULV atomisation uses far less solution per pass than spraying. For a space this size the monthly cost is less than one member's monthly fee.
The only thing you actually control is the state of the space before the next group arrives
Kittipong's space lost thirty-eight members — about 247,000 baht of recurring monthly revenue — from a question in a LINE group that he could not answer.
Nightly ULV fogging costs less per month than one member's fee and runs while the space sits empty overnight. It covers the whole floor including the pantry and phone booths, and it goes on your pricing page.
If you run a coworking space, a serviced office, a shared workspace or an office rental business, send us the floor plan and we will tell you exactly what it needs.
See the AIROFOG U260 ULV cold fogger, specifications, droplet range and price
See product and price — click here
Call 065-556-6294 or add LINE @whd268
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