by Kirk Layton, President & Co-Founder of The Tenex Group
A lot has changed in the commercial real estate world from PC – pre-COVID – to now. Tenants and property managers alike had to figure out how to respond to an unprecedented situation and write a new rulebook on the fly. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the gap between the building amenities tenants want and what building managers think they want. The great amenity guessing game is alive and well.
The Original Gap (2018, Pre-Pandemic)
Back in 2018, Building Engines’ Tenant Experience Gap Report found a real mismatch: Property teams assumed that the top two most in-demand amenities were an in-lobby café and meeting space, whereas what the tenants really wanted the most was public WiFi and an onsite gym. Even though their priorities were different, what was consistent on both sides was the need for better amenities. CBRE’s 2018 Occupier Study backed this up, finding 81% of corporate real estate leaders were actively pushing landlords for better amenities.
That gap was the result of a difference in perceived priorities: tenant needs were relatively consistent, and it was mostly a matter of building managers asking the right questions in the right way. Then everything changed.
Everyone Went Home
When COVID hit, the amenity guessing game paused, and the whole conversation about what a building “owes” tenants got rewritten. Rooftop lounges didn’t disappear, but they stopped being the headline. The headline became: will anyone actually come in?
The Gap Today: Same Shape, Different Stuff Inside It
Here’s the part that doesn’t get said enough: tenants don’t fully know what they want right now either. Every company is mid-experiment on hybrid schedules, in-office incentives, and how to get their own employees to actually show up. As those answers shift internally, quarter to quarter, what a tenant asks of their building shifts right along with it. Building teams aren’t failing to keep up with a fixed list — they’re trying to hit a target that’s constantly moving.
And what’s landed at the top of that shifting list is genuinely tough terrain. CBRE’s latest Occupier Sentiment Survey has the single most-valued amenity as a short, easy commute, with onsite parking, public transit access, and bike storage close behind, alongside walkable food and beverage options nearby. What’s more, a 2025 CRE tenant survey found 85% of occupiers now expect an enhanced workplace experience, not just square footage — and nearly half will pay a premium for it.
So What Can Building Teams Actually Do?
This is where the story gets more hopeful than the headline numbers suggest. The commute-related wish list may be largely out of a property team’s hands, but a lot of the tenant experience gap has nothing to do with capital projects — it has to do with communication. Plenty of buildings already have solid amenities that tenants either don’t know about, forgot about, or have never actually tried.
Here are a few things that move the needle without touching capex:
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Lobby events and activations. A well-run activation does double duty: it’s a nice moment for tenants, and it’s a live, in-person reminder that the gym, the café, or the lounge they’ve been walking past actually exists and is worth using.
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Digital newsletters and social content. The fastest fix for an “underused amenity” problem is often just telling people it’s there. Regular, low-lift communication keeps existing perks visible instead of leaving them to speak for themselves.
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Ongoing feedback loops. Post-event surveys, quick pulse-check polls, casual conversations at activations — these all give building teams a running read on what’s actually landing, instead of waiting for the next annual tenant survey to find out what they missed.
None of this requires guessing right on the first try. It just requires staying close enough to tenants that the guessing game stops being necessary.
The Bottom Line
The amenities gap is proof that tenant needs are evolving faster than any single survey can capture, especially while companies are still writing their own post-COVID playbook for getting people back to the office.
The buildings that close the gap aren’t necessarily the ones spending the most. They’re the ones staying in the conversation — through events, through communication, through feedback that never really stops — so that as tenant priorities shift again next quarter, they already have a head start.
A 2025 CRE tenant survey found 85% of occupiers now expect an enhanced workplace experience, not just square footage — and nearly half will pay a premium for it.
