A meeting room is booked, but nobody is there. Elsewhere, a team is desperately looking for somewhere to meet. Welcome to everyday office life. Swiss workplace technology specialist ROOMZ wants to put an end to this familiar frustration – and is presenting the third generation of its meeting room booking display at Orgatec 2026.

Sometimes, it's the small things that make the biggest difference in an office. A digital sign outside a meeting room, for example. Not particularly exciting at first glance? The device that ROOMZ account managers Ann-Katrin Schindler and Leon Emmerich are presenting at the company's stand in Cologne certainly offers more than a simple occupied-or-available indicator.

It's remarkably slim, too: just seven millimetres thick. No power cables, no network cables, no drilling. The display can be mounted on glass, wood or masonry. A replaceable battery keeps it running for around four years under typical operating conditions.

The secret is a technology more commonly associated with e-readers: e-paper. Unlike conventional LCD screens, it mainly requires energy when the displayed information changes. Once updated, the image remains visible without a continuous power supply.

Third generation, new possibilities

With its third-generation display, introduced in September 2026, ROOMZ has stepped up the technology. The screen has grown to 8.2 inches, with improved contrast and a resolution of 1,920 × 1,440 pixels. A viewing angle of almost 180 degrees ensures that information remains easy to read, even when approaching a meeting room from the side.

Other improvements include a new Wi-Fi chipset supporting WPA3 security and a USB-C port. A practical detail for facility management: the battery compartment can now be opened without tools. It may seem like a minor improvement. Anyone responsible for maintaining several hundred displays might see it differently.

The design remains deliberately understated. Brushed aluminium, real glass and a clean, minimal appearance. The display comes in black or silver. Rather than touching the screen itself, users interact with touch-sensitive controls positioned beneath it. The display surface therefore remains free of fingerprints.

Putting an end to ghost meetings

The real intelligence lies behind the screen. The ROOMZ Display shows current room occupancy and upcoming reservations. Employees can also make spontaneous bookings, select a meeting duration or release a room directly at the device. Daily and weekly calendar views provide additional orientation.

According to the manufacturer, the system integrates with Microsoft Teams and more than 20 other booking platforms, allowing companies to retain their existing workflows.

Things become particularly interesting when the display is combined with the ROOMZ Sensor. The sensor detects whether a reserved meeting room is actually occupied. If nobody arrives, the system can automatically release the booking. The waiting period can be configured according to room type – from 15 minutes for smaller meeting rooms to as much as an hour for larger spaces.

Ghost meetings appear to be anything but rare. ROOMZ estimates that around 30 percent of meetings fall into this category. Rooms get booked as a precaution, meetings are postponed, calendar entries are forgotten. On paper, the office looks busy. In reality, valuable space remains unused.

ROOMZ Analytics takes the concept further by combining booking information with actual occupancy data. The resulting insights can reveal which meeting rooms are heavily used, where capacity is insufficient and which spaces might benefit from a different layout or purpose. According to ROOMZ, occupancy detection is anonymised and does not identify individual users.

For architects, workplace designers and facility managers, this is a relevant distinction. The challenge is increasingly not simply how much office space is available, but how effectively that space supports the people using it.

Swiss engineering with staying power

ROOMZ was founded in 2015 by Swiss engineers Roger Meier and Patrick Terreaux. The solution was developed in collaboration with ETH Zurich, which also became the company's first customer. The university installed 400 displays as early as 2016.

Today, according to ROOMZ, ETH Zurich operates more than 800 displays across its campuses, integrated with ten different booking systems. Perhaps more remarkably, the first devices installed in 2016 are reportedly still in operation. At ETH Zurich, ROOMZ reports just 15 RMA cases to date – returns handled through its service or warranty process.

That longevity is central to the company's proposition. According to the manufacturer, the third-generation display is designed to last at least ten years. Replaceable batteries, low energy consumption and largely automated device management are intended to keep maintenance requirements to a minimum. The displays spend around 99 percent of their operating time in sleep mode.

There is also a financial argument. ROOMZ estimates the average total cost at approximately €20 per meeting room per month, calculated over five years. This is the company's own estimate, and actual costs depend on the installation and configuration.

ROOMZ reports more than 2,000 customers in over 25 countries, with solutions deployed across more than 50,000 workspaces, including meeting rooms, collaboration spaces and desks.

Back at the company's stand in Cologne, one aspect stands out: how little technology needs to be visible to make a meeting room work more intelligently. A slim display on the wall, connected to an existing booking system and, if required, a wider occupancy analytics platform.

It may not revolutionise the office. But it represents precisely the kind of unobtrusive technology that flexible workplaces increasingly need.

After all, a smart meeting room should be one thing above all: easy to use.