Workplace Mobility in Cambodia 80% Below Baseline During Lockdown

• 4 May 2021
• Local News
• 1467 Views

The COVID-19 pandemic has put significant pressure on the office market over the past year. The mobility of this sector has become even worse during the 2021 lockdown as people have been forced to work from home. According to Google Mobility Tracker, workplace traffic in Cambodia for April was at -80% below the baseline before February 20.

Given such circumstances, what will be the future of the office market in Cambodia?

CBRE Cambodia’s analysis is that working from home is not quite suitable for the context of Cambodia due to many factors. The most significant one is the lack of technology infrastructure, which makes working from home quite challenging. Moreover, most business operations here in Cambodia require physical working styles, especially those sectors such as customer care, management, and government bureaucracy.

Thus, people will eventually return to the office as they need a better working environment and their social groups. However, more precaution measures will be implemented for the reopening.

Besides mandatory masks, temperature checks, social distancing, and regular sanitising; each office will also adopt new strategies to increase safety such as service digitalisation, settling shift, layout adjustment, and duplication of locations, among others.

With this trend, CBRE Cambodia predicts that the office market will recover by the end of 2021. Overall, occupancy may fall slightly by the end of the year, but not as much as in 2020.

Rental prices may drop to around US$14.5 /sqm, while landlords will also tend to offer larger locations and promotion to tenants. This factor makes business owners with long-term vision grab the opportunity by signing a long-term contract of at least three years.

As a result, the number of transactions is also expected to increase, while the quality of offices will also improve, in particular Grade B offices.

• Analysis
• Economy and Finance