The office market is as strong as ever – if you look in the right places. The highly-amentized, Class A buildings that can draw workers back to the office and support hybrid work are in high demand. But tenants in today’s market are expecting more than the typical list of concessions—they expect the latest in amenity experience solutions.
These amenity experience products include features such as mobile building access, granular amenity booking and room scheduling, connected retail partnerships and countless occupancy automations. They have proven to be valuable incentives for getting employees to once again embrace in-office productivity.
Office operators using these tools see other benefits, including the centralization of data across disparate building systems, how tenants value amenities and more responsive maintenance teams, just to start. In short, tenant experience platforms lead to greater building intelligence and a more engaged community.
This report explores the advantages of tenant experience solutions for Class A office operators, diving into their key features, the names to know in the field, and how to choose the right partner. The field is growing quickly and the need for it has never been more critical.
What’s behind the growth of experience solutions?
The ongoing “flight to quality” is driving Class A office operators to deploy strategies to meet demand for hybrid environments and a more technologically engaged property. The at-home work experience has bled into the commercial built world, and the result is a need to reduce physical and digital boundaries. Tenant RFPs are seeking granular property access, purposeful office plans and modern consumer wellness amenities that go beyond treadmills and smoothie bars.
Delivering an elevated tenant experience certainly can’t be carried out alone by legacy property management systems or even the most dedicated on-site staff. It requires automation-at-scale, mobile-first omnichannel communications and widespread data integration between tenant and landlord enterprises.
Compounding the issue is a stark reminder of what’s at stake for operators if such needs aren’t met.
Class A space and major market trophy properties are experiencing a period of high demand, yet office absorption in total remained negative in Q2 2025, according to Cushman-Wakefield.
Aging properties with bland vibes and dim corridors, dated telecom infrastructure and the expectation of seamless digital connectivity only catalyze the resistance to full-time office use. Tenants want to exist in an IoT culture, and will choose the office property that can best meet that vision.
A July 2025 report from UCToday, a trade resource for the unified communications space, said that “Building owners with legacy infrastructure are struggling to meet the diverse and complex needs of the modern work customers, and they are competing with greenfield, smart buildings, LEED certified and built on a modern data architecture that leverages AI across the entire customer value chain.”
Aditya Sanghvi, Senior Partner at McKinsey, underscored UCToday’s findings that operators wanting to compete need to match modern workplace demands.
“Many users of office space are reimagining offices as more dynamic spaces, and that’s encouraging people to come in,” Sanghvi said. “They’re upgrading food and beverage. They’re programming days of the week when teams come in to work together. They’re creating digital experiences that enable employees to order food to be delivered to their desks, book rooms they need, or use their smartphones to get their dry cleaning handled.
And in fact, buildings that are new, newly developed, or newly renovated and in great locations are doing incredibly well from a rent perspective. There is a lot of demand for the highest-quality office product.”
Can’t my PMS handle it?
Centering software investment around traditional maintenance workflow and building systems neglects the themes of broader operational transparency and the day-to-day interactions proven to attract users to Class A vacancies.
Operators already invested in building automation systems are initially better suited to partnering with a tenant experience application because real-time operational data and the granular awareness of HVAC, lighting, utilities and security systems are critical to building intelligence. These systems certainly contribute to how a tenant interacts with their workplace but are duty-bound to the building itself, not its occupants.
A stand-alone PMS tends to lack the outward-facing features desired by office users. They are back-office centric and lack the amenity-first appeal of software platforms centered on tenant retention and concierge-level services. Integrations are becoming increasingly common, though. For example, Building Engines inked a partnership with HqO’s Workplace Experience to bridge its deficiencies in amenity management, a deal that appears to be delivering on all promises for one Insights by Blueprint Advisory Council member.
“We have consolidated our portfolio on Prism, offering a great product for our PM [and], engineering teams, and our partners. Ability to perform operational tasks, vendor management, and integration with HqO is quite beneficial. Our experience with their support team is also good,” we were told.
Prism is Building Engines’ scalable enterprise application built to incorporate all aspects of property and portfolio operations, essentially an MS Office for CRE. It’s big, multi-faceted and now offers a native amenity services component, as well as an open API to connect with existing technology systems.
This presents landlords with the benefit of not having to switch operating systems if wanting to link up with the likes of HqO, Cove, VTS and Equiem to roll out an amenity services program.
Know that most popular point solutions do blend components of building automation and traditional property administration, thus presenting three options to users of Building Engines and competing platforms: upgrade, switch or integrate.
Popular amenity experience providers
Operators’ responses to our Insights by Blueprint survey (conducted in August-September 2025) indicated that many office operators have tried multiple office experience solutions, suggesting that finding that ideal overlap between features and expectations takes time and that initial priorities for such systems include, among other features, the ability to integrate with existing tools and provide hands-on oversight during onboarding.
The following summaries cover the major players in the amenity experience space mentioned in our survey.
AppFolio
Many know AppFolio for its primary use in multifamily and SFR but it does deliver value to office operators as well. It’s an application that merges all aspects of commercial property management with tenant experience, popular integrations and accounting. Its intent is to be all things to most operators, even offering new hire training modules, something not common to other options Blueprint examined.
AppFolio offers a full-featured mobile companion and uses AI to cut redundancies in daily task execution and communications. Another standout feature is universal search, meaning an omnipresent search window can retrieve content from any department or push them into the proper feature to complete work.
Building Engines Prism
This is a holistic enterprise solution built to scale with portfolio growth, combining all facets of owning and operating a major commercial property enterprise. It offers property condition analysis and building health, vendor bidding and selection, PO and contract facilitation and utility oversight and reporting. It offers value-adds like digital space measurement and floor plan utilization, tenant compliance and a branded insurance upsell.
Its tenant experience features reflect most contemporary market offerings, such as visitor access control, omni-channel tenant communications, amenity reservations and calendaring. Should its own tools not suffice, there is a full integration with HqO’s solution that can better streamline the connection and ramp up.
HqO
HqO offers a three-tiered system focused on office user experience. It provides mobile and browser access to core features, detailed measurement and reporting of how those features are being used, and a marketplace for integrating with a “growing directory of highly impactful and desired services and amenity partners.”
What it calls XM (experience manager) controls tenant and visitor access, parking management, retail services and restaurant integrations (with menu and in-app ordering), building event and room management, repair and maintenance workflows and creative asset creation for tenant content marketing.
One Advisory Council member told us their experience with HqO was a good one.
“Very accommodating team, always willing to work with us. We really like the extra support they provide to help us populate the app with content related to local events/happenings.”
Cove
Cove’s product spans all commercial sectors, from life science to residential. This broad application of tenant experience and thus, more widespread user feedback, lends itself to faster, targeted feature updates and delivers additional value for portfolios containing multiple property classes. Its most prominent case study is the Willis Tower.
Its office solution tackles building event promotion, surveys and communications, door-by-door mobile access permissions, visitor approval and security confirmation, building and portfolio-wide user analytics and performance reports, on-site displays and amenity scheduling.
One Advisory Council member mentioned that Cove’s focus on amenity booking stands out for its ability to consider lease terms, and for “ensuring your tenants who have lease clauses related to ‘rights of first refusal’ can block the amenity for the term of their lease.”
Equiem
Similar to HqO, Equiem delivers a tiered product that includes building performance monitoring, tenant experience tools and expansive reporting on amenity use and tenant activity.
Divided into “feature personas,” it offers categorized functions for asset managers, property managers, workplace managers and what it calls, “tenants and talent.” Generally, it built its tenant experience components specifically around the hybrid office experience to accommodate workspace scheduling and building access.
Equiem offers robust communications content and distribution for building maintenance alerts, event announcements, surveys and other community-minded activities. It also offers detailed tenant surveys and user feedback tools.
An Equiem user told Blueprint they had some trouble seeing the value. Their take: “Great solution but value vs investment did not work. Integrations [are] a challenge.”
VTS
The company offers features in two silos: leasing and asset management, and tenant and resident experience. It’s a comprehensive building OS for office and multifamily operators wanting to consolidate their tech stack.
The tenant experience component is a mobile first, consumer-minded application designed to attract office users and serve them in a single sign-on environment. It white labels its app for tenants who consider branding critical, and in doing so offers work order processing, room scheduling, visitor access permissions and an integration with Apple wallet for digital key cards.
Unlike some of the others Blueprint looked at, VTS has a marketplace of industry and consumer integrations to reduce friction during installation and minimize the risk of having to cut existing solutions. It can work with Building Engines Prism, for example, as well as Azure, Genetec, HID, OnGuard, Yardi, MailChimp, Open Table and others.
The same respondent who had issues with Equiem apparently found success with a pilot of VTS, rating it a “five out five on a scale of one to five” while another praised its access functions. “Better functionality with visitor and ACS [access control system] integration.”
How to pick an amenity experience solution
The reasons to implement a tenant services automation solution should be clear. Choosing one is decidedly not.
- Needs analysis
Operators should begin with identifying their priority use case. What outcomes are most desired? Is it to answer demands for better room scheduling or more connections to retail partners? If there’s been frequent breakdowns in maintenance communications or work order fulfillment, start with vendors that either integrate with existing BAS or provide more modern, mobile-first experiences for request input and progress reporting.
Tenant input is crucial here, especially when the intent is to replace an existing provider. Use surveys to identify hurdles and pain points, consider old-school (in-person) focus groups. Tenants in multiple buildings should be part of the process if the plan is to scale it across a portfolio. Most vendors will stage property roll-outs, scrubbing and standardizing data from each building’s disparate systems as they go. The good news is that deployments should get easier with each property’s onboarding. - Integrations
Ensure that applications in place for building system performance can efficiently work in conjunction with what’s being considered for amenity management. If it can, is your data aligned with current operations and is the connection between the two systems bidirectional? Operators will want to avoid manual monthly synchronizations, as they can lead to delayed insights and jeopardize data integrity. There’s less risk if that process can be scheduled and automated, however. Pay especially close attention to how a new amenity platform interacts with fire safety and security systems.
Some highly specific point solutions, such as EV charge management systems, unique rewards programs or wellness installations (mental health/retreat space, lactation support) may not connect directly. This is often by design. Healthcare amenities introduce privacy concerns when scheduling, for example, as do some rewards applications in respect to personal finances. In other words, there will be some tools best left as stand-alone. - Data and Privacy
Tenants are going to ask about data ownership and privacy so ensure the vendor selected can help explain that, especially as it relates to payment systems, room bookings and building access. Visitor access and identity verification are part of this, as well.
Should a system change come down the road (something Blueprint’s surveys have shown is common), data portability and ownership of the building performance reports and user insights generated over time will come into question. It’s important to know who owns this and in what form it can be extracted. - Pilot period
Any vendor worth considering is going to allow a partial rollout to stress-test primary features. Expect varying degrees of application access and support, which can make it difficult to gauge the true effectiveness of some features, as well as the support team itself. Use the opportunity to address the most critical areas of need within the operation. Remember to involve any retail partners, key team members and if possible, a current tenant instead of a sample case offered by the vendor. - Training and onboarding
Frequent changes to amenity experience systems saddled by a tedious onboarding process can lead to a low adoption and widespread cynicism about an operator’s intent and ability to deliver.
Training for staff and in-house users is one thing, managing change with existing tenants is more complicated, so ensure they understand what’s behind the switch. They’ll need to know timelines and what systems and amenities are being impacted. Stay communicative.
Lean heavily on vendors to assist in the rollout and consider negotiating for additional support and the ability to test the system in full. Demonstrations and sales calls show a system in its best form, not necessarily real-world scenarios.
There’s little doubt the right tenant experience solution provides office operators exceptional advantages when competing for the post-pandemic office user. They offer an elevated occupancy environment and help bridge the gap between the remote, at-home work experience and the productivity and community-building benefits of the traditional office.
Operators using them report that above all else, they help overcome the disruption of returning to work. The office space has changed for the better and technology is its primary catalyst.
Tenant-first software selection, adoption and management have not traditionally been part of the office landlord’s operating plan. But modernization comes with a cost, and if the goal is to continue to collect rent, it’s a cost worth embracing.
-Craig Rowe
