Top 5 Meeting Room Booking & Access Control Solutions (2025).

If you’re monetising meeting rooms across a flexible workspace portfolio, the right “last-mile” experience at the door decides whether you capture the booking — and the revenue — or lose both. Below is a fair, practical guide to five credible options we see most often for meeting room access. The lens is simple: which solutions best combine real-time booking, payment, and access so you can stop squatting, enable spontaneous “I need a room now” moments, and see fast payback.

How we evaluated solutions.

We assessed each vendor on five key criteria that flex operators care about when it comes to managing meeting room access control:

1. Real-time booking + access (no sync delays)

2. Payments at the door (capture revenue instantly)

3. Spontaneous, walk-up bookings (no app required to tap)

4. Time to value (installation effort and typical payback)

5. Fit for flexible workspaces (multi-tenant complexity, not just single-tenant offices)

   
   

1) elumo — Booking, payment and access in one tap.

Best for: Operators and landlords who want rooms to offer maximum revenue and experience — walk-up demand captured, squatting eliminated, and revenue in the bank.

• What it is: A meeting-room-specific platform (hardware + software) where users tap their phone at the door to book, pay and unlock in under one second. No app required for tap; uses Apple/Google Wallet. Doors only open for valid bookings, so squatting stops by design.

• Why it matters: Traditional booking can’t control doors in real time; traditional access control can’t sell the room. elumo’s integrated Reader + Hub closes that gap.

• Time to value: Typically 2–4 hours per room to install; most sites live in under a week; 3–6 month payback is realistic. Works with most commercial electronic locks you already have.

• When to choose it: You want measurable revenue impact (more bookings, zero leakage), frictionless user experience, and complementary fit alongside your building access and booking apps.

Check out the potential ROI for yourself with the elumo meeting room ROI calculator.

2) Salto KS — Established cloud access control.

Best for: Building-wide security with wire-free locks and enterprise features; can coexist with a meeting-room monetisation layer.

• Strengths: Big global brand, reliable cloud platform, strong mobile credentials, retrofit-friendly battery locks. Great for multi-site building access and compliance.

• Trade-offs for rooms: Salto does access, not booking or payments. For meeting rooms you’ll still need a separate booking system and a way to charge users — which introduces sync delays and revenue leakage on spontaneous usage.

• Pragmatic take: Keep Salto for perimeter and long-dwell doors; layer elumo on rooms to sell them in real time.

3) Brivo — Cloud-first access control.

Best for: Modern SaaS access control across portfolios that value a clean admin experience.

• Strengths: Mature cloud platform, mobile credentials, multi-site management; widely deployed.

• Trade-offs for rooms: Like most access control, Brivo doesn’t process bookings or payments at the door. That means ad-hoc “tap-to-book” revenue still slips away unless you add a specialised layer.

• Pragmatic take: If Brivo handles your building access, add elumo for room-level monetisation to capture spontaneous demand and stop squatting.

4) Kisi — Design-forward access control popular in coworking.

Best for: Operators who value sleek hardware, a good admin UX, and an API-first approach.

• Strengths: Modern brand, good mobile app, active in coworking, strong API; reviews consistently call out ease of setup.

• Trade-offs for rooms: Kisi’s a solid access system but does not handle bookings or payments. You’ll rely on a separate booking app and still face the instant-demand problem at the door.

• Pragmatic take: Pair Kisi for general access with elumo where the revenue is — meeting rooms. You keep Kisi’s strengths and gain one-tap booking + payment when and where it matters.

5) HID — Enterprise-grade security.

Best for: High-security environments and enterprise perimeter control.

• Strengths: The “gold standard” identity and credential ecosystem, global scale, compliance. If you’re securing a data centre or financial facility, HID is a known quantity.

• Trade-offs for rooms: Over-spec’d for most meeting-room doors — and still no bookings or payments at the door. You’ll need a separate booking platform and integrations.

• Pragmatic take: Keep HID where enterprise policy demands it. Use elumo on meeting rooms to convert demand to revenue without adding admin burden.

 

Quick comparison (what happens at the door?).

Vendor	Tap = Book?	Tap = Pay?	Unlock Validations	Walk-up (no app)	Typical time-to-value
elumo	Yes	Yes	Real-time	Yes (mobile wallet)	2–4 hrs/room; payback 3–6 mo
Salto KS	No	No	Real-time access, separate booking (delayed sync)	Via booking app + integration	Enterprise project; CapEx-led
Brivo	No	No	Real-time access, separate booking (delayed sync)	Via booking app + integration	SaaS deployment; add booking/payments layer
Kisi	No	No	Real-time access, separate booking (delayed sync)	Via booking app + integration	Fast to roll out; needs monetisation layer
HID	No	No	Enterprise-grade, separate booking (delayed sync)	App/cards; integrations common	Enterprise programme; premium TCO

Which one’s right for meeting rooms?

If you mainly need building security, any of the access-control incumbents above is a sound choice.

But if your goal is meeting-room revenue and experience, you need the moment of demand to equal the moment of transaction. That means one tap that books, pays, and unlocks — not “book elsewhere, then hope the door syncs.” That’s exactly the gap elumo fills, while coexisting neatly with your building-wide access system.

Want to sanity-check your numbers? Run them through the meeting room ROI calculator to quickly model your potential ROI. Then get in touch so we can run through a more comprehensive model with you.

FAQs.

Can I keep my building access system and just use elumo for rooms?
Yes. Many operators keep Salto/HID/Brivo/Kisi for perimeter and deploy elumo on meeting rooms. It’s complementary: security where you need it; revenue capture where you make money.

How fast is tap-to-book at the door?
Measured under one second, using Apple/Google Wallet — no separate app required for tap.

Will elumo work with our existing locks and booking app?
Yes. elumo works with most commercial electronic locks and can integrate with your existing booking or tenant-experience platforms to add the at-door, real-time layer.

In summary.

If your KPIs are more bookings, zero squatting, and happier members, elumo is engineered for that exact outcome — and it plays nicely with the access control you already run building-wide, as well as your existing bookings solution.

See how elumo meeting room booking & access works, check the elumo hardware specifications, or plug your numbers into the meeting room ROI calculator for more info.

Or, book a demo and see elumo in action for yourself.