Golf Simulator for the Office: Is It Worth It?.

A golf simulator room can earn its place in an office when it’s built as a social space and a client-hosting room, not a perk that sits empty. The research on why people come into the office keeps pointing at the same thing: time with coworkers. A simulator gives that time a reason and a place. It just has to be built for an office building, which is a different job than a basement.

I build simulator rooms in Kansas City, and we run our own five-bay facility, so this guide covers both sides: what the workplace data says, and what it takes to make the room work day to day.

Why offices are adding golf simulators

Getting people into the office is now less about rules and more about reasons. A few numbers from the big workplace studies show where those reasons come from:

Finding	Source
Socializing (63%) is the top reason employees come to the office, ahead of internal meetings (55%)	JLL, 2025 Global HX Trends (14,000+ employees)
Average office presence rose to 3.2 days a week, from 2.7 in 2024	JLL, 2025 Global HX Trends
Workers prefer the office for meeting new people (56%) and collaborating (55%)	Owl Labs, State of Hybrid Work 2025
Time spent socializing in the office has nearly doubled	Gensler, Global Workplace Survey 2025
72% of companies met their attendance goals, up from 61% the year before	CBRE, 2025 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey

A golf simulator isn’t the only way to give people a reason to be together, but it’s a good one. It’s active without being athletic, it fits a lunch hour, and it works for four coworkers or a client and a host. It also changes the feel of the space. People who would never book a meeting room to hang out will book a bay.

One honest caveat: amenities alone don’t fill an office. Surveys consistently rank time with colleagues above perks. That’s why the room should be designed and run as a shared social space, not as an expensive toy in a corner.

Real buildings that have done it

This isn’t hypothetical. Some of the most competitive office buildings in the country now treat a simulator as a core amenity:

• The Empire State Building opened a 10,000 sq ft tenant lounge in 2024 with two golf simulators that any tenant can reserve during the workday. It’s part of 65,000 sq ft of tenant-only amenities.
• 5 Times Square in New York logged 80 simulator bookings in its first three weeks with a single tenant in the building, and settled at four or five bookings a day. The building’s leasing lead described it as “decompression in the middle of the day.”
• Workplace designers have added simulator spaces to office projects in New York, Dallas, and Los Angeles. One architecture firm’s principal said simulators turned out to be “not as niche or gimmicky” as they first expected.

Is an office golf simulator worth it? The numbers

You can’t put a dollar figure on a simulator by itself. You can put one on the things it’s meant to support: engagement, retention, and relationships.

• Engagement is low and expensive. Gallup found global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, its lowest level since 2020, at an estimated $10 trillion cost in lost productivity.
• Engaged teams stay. In Gallup’s meta-analysis of 112,312 work units, top-quartile teams had 18–43% lower turnover, 23% higher profitability, and 81% lower absenteeism than bottom-quartile teams.
• Turnover is costly. Gallup estimates replacing an employee costs one-half to two times their annual salary, and that 52% of people who leave say their employer could have prevented it.

Run the math for your own company. Put the cost of the room next to Gallup’s replacement estimate of half to two times one salary. If the room helps keep even one good person from leaving, the comparison usually isn’t close. Whether it will is a judgment call for each employer, and we’d rather you make it with real numbers than with a sales pitch.

Client entertainment without the tee time

Golf has always been a business tool. The problem is that a round takes five hours, depends on the weather, and leaves out anyone who doesn’t play. A simulator fixes most of that:

• A round fits in an afternoon, or nine holes fits in a long lunch.
• The weather doesn’t matter, which counts for a lot in a Kansas City January or July.
• Non-golfers can join. Simulator golf has a big casual audience. The National Golf Foundation counted 8.1 million Americans using golf simulators in 2024, more than double the 3.8 million in 2015, and 51% of them hadn’t played a round on a course that year. Closest-to-the-pin and long-drive games work for everyone.

For Kansas City offices and landlords

Kansas City’s office market rewards buildings that give people a reason to show up. JLL put metro office vacancy at 20.2% in Q2 2025 and described a clear flight to quality toward buildings that support hybrid work, collaboration, and tenant amenities. Local brokers report that Class A space has kept a low vacancy rate and that tenants will pay for higher-quality buildings. For a landlord, a simulator lounge is one way to compete. For a tenant, it’s a way to make your own suite the place people want to be. If you also own residential or mixed-use buildings, the same thinking applies to residents; see our guide to golf simulators as an apartment amenity.

What does an office golf simulator room need?

An office building was designed for desks. These are the items we check before anything else:

1. Space. Build shared rooms to the comfortable size, about 10’ H × 14’ W × 18’ D (roughly 250 sq ft). You can’t test every employee’s swing, so a tall player with a steep swing has to fit safely too. Full details are in our golf simulator room size guide.
2. Ceiling height. Many office suites have a drop ceiling with more height above it. We confirm the real clearance, including the projector, before anyone signs off. See minimum ceiling height.
3. Sound. Ball strikes carry. A bay next to a conference room or another tenant needs real isolation, not just foam panels. Here’s what actually works for soundproofing.
4. Landlord and permits. In a leased space, the work usually runs through a tenant-improvement approval, and some scope needs permits. We coordinate with the property manager and pull the permits the scope requires.
5. Simple controls. Anyone on the team should be able to start a session and shut it down without a walkthrough. That means one screen, one login, and nothing to rewire.
6. Durability. A shared room gets more use than a home bay. Turf, screen, and the areas around the hitting zone are built for daily use, with the equipment protected.
7. Scheduling. A simple booking calendar, the same one you use for conference rooms, keeps the room fair and shows you whether it’s being used.

How much does an office golf simulator cost?

Commercial rooms are quoted per project because offices vary so much. A single office amenity room usually lands between our residential range, about $25,000–$45,000+, and a full commercial bay, which typically runs $50,000–$100,000+ per bay all in. Sound isolation, construction, durable finishes, and the equipment you choose move the number most. Our Kansas City installation cost guide breaks down the ranges.

On timing, the simulator install itself takes about 1–3 days, and a turnkey build runs about 1–2 weeks once the room is ready. Construction and approvals come first and depend on the space. The full breakdown is in our installation timeline.

Making sure it gets used

The rooms that stay busy have a plan behind them:

• A standing event, like a Thursday lunch league or a monthly team scramble.
• Client nights that pair the bay with food and an easy format.
• Onboarding: new hires get a session with their team in the first week.
• Games for non-golfers, like closest-to-the-pin and long-drive contests.

Ready to look at your space?

We design and build commercial golf simulator installations in Kansas City, including office and workplace amenity rooms. You can also see a working multi-bay room in person at our showroom before you decide.

Sources

• JLL, 2025 Global Human Experience (HX) Trends — the productivity paradox
• Owl Labs, State of Hybrid Work 2025
• Gensler, Global Workplace Survey 2025 roundtable
• CBRE, 2025 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey
• Empire State Realty Trust, Empire Lounge opening (2024)
• Bisnow, RXR and the office golf simulator (2024)
• WorkLife, Why golf simulators are the new hot office amenity (2024)
• Gallup, State of the Global Workplace
• Gallup, Employee engagement drives growth
• Gallup, This fixable problem costs U.S. businesses $1 trillion
• National Golf Foundation, The Golf Simulator Opportunity (white paper, 2025)
• REBusiness Online, Kansas City’s office market in focus (2025)
• Lane4 / Kansas City Business Journal, The KC office market: a tale of two realities (2025)

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Bryan Moore builds simulator rooms through All Seasons Design and Build and helps run the five-bay All Seasons Indoor Golf Club in Kansas City. Planning an office room? Start a conversation.