A virtual business centre.

My friend is thinking about a virtual business center creating where small business units can occupy an virtual office; perhaps it will have a big virtual conference hall, where participants communicate online in a separate virtual  room; besides the center would have fair and exhibition hall. I have not came across to something like this. What do you think? Is it worth money and forces investing?

I am sure this will work, but it also depends on the location where you are.

There are many IT related companies (like mine) that don't have an office, and could use one like that in order to impress a new client :)

Of course a complete virtual office should have more, like phone numbers, snail mail delivery, etc.

I agree with Nik, it sounds like a good idea to me.

We have a few of these virtual office spaces here in Portugal. We call them business nests. Companies share meeting rooms, conference hall and infrastructure like phone lines. Commonly all the compnies share the front desk. One (or two) operators that receive all the calls and redirect them to the proper company. Same with faxes, Internet connection and severall other structures.

It's a great way to start a company.

Good idea .I think this style .Really hope it works!

The virtual part is what confuses me. Do you mean a 100% online office space? What featrues would it have? If you mean a brick and mortar co-op office space this is quite common in the US.

If you mean more like a virtual office with virtual assistants and not an actual office. Then there are a bunch of services out there for that. People taking phone calls, faxes, mails and whatnots and forwarded to you including an actual physical address... I for one have provided virtual assistants for businesses before...

I've seen these offices set up all over.  Nice business model for a highly populated area.

Very good and quite unique idea. Hope it will work.

Urm very cool idea. Have you put it into play?