CELEBRATION — When Kirby Ryan meets with clients interested in his medical services, they sit around a polished wooden desk inside a well-appointed executive office in downtown Celebration.

But Ryan must make an appointment to use the office at 215 Celebration Place because he’s allotted only 16 hours a month there. Most of his time is spent at his home office 10 blocks away, where a spare room is lined with laptops and file cabinets.

About 150 small businesses share Suite 500 on the fifth floor in a corporate park surrounded by lakes and manicured lawns. Users pay $250 per month for a package that includes an elite mailing address, an answering service and occasional office space.

It’s called a “virtual office,” and for small-business owners — who choose not to or cannot pay for expensive and scarce office space — it’s a way to look big-time at a small-time price.

“It gives the appearance of a professional office setting when you need that setting,” said Ryan, whose Clinical Mobility business sets up flu-shot clinics and diagnostic services at retailers and employers across the country. Adding to that professional appearance, he said, is the receptionist’s computer that tells her which business a client is calling for, allowing her to answer the phone with a greeting that includes the business’s name.

For some people, it’s better to say they have a business space, “versus working out of a home office or garage apartment,” Ryan said. Virtual offices have become the modern-day post-office box, but with a physical address. Budding entrepreneurs no longer have to conduct business at their local Starbucks coffee shop, where they compete for table space, electrical outlets and a quiet moment between uses of the espresso machine to make a phone call.

There are virtual offices in many high-rent locations in Central Florida, including downtown Orlando, Maitland and Winter Park.

People are attracted to doing business with companies that have established reputations, said Al Polfer, director of the Small Business Development Center at the University of Central Florida.

“Celebration denotes success,” Polfer said, referring to the upscale Osceola community near Walt Disney World. “It’s a high-rent area. It would give a perception of success.”

In Kissimmee, while business people are placed on a waiting list to rent “hard” office space to call their own, they can purchase a full-service virtual package for $227 per month at Park Hill Place Executive Center. Owner Pam Eaton, who runs the virtual office at John Young Parkway and Oak Street, said office space in Osceola County is tight — occupancy is above 90 percent — and some people don’t need a lot of it.

“They don’t need an office because they’re on the road,” she said. “They come in, touch down for a little while and take off again.”

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that virtual offices are popular. But with only an occupational license to prove they exist, the thin paper trail makes it difficult to report how many people are using them.

Carol Ann Dykes is the chief operating officer for UCF’s Technology Incubator, where start-up high-tech companies receive guidance in business development. She said her operation provides real office space but also assists two or three virtual-office clients.

“It’s not too surprising it [growth in virtual offices] is occurring because of the growing level of entrepreneurs and the growing number of home-based businesses,” she said.

Experts agree that virtual offices are a result of evolving technology. It’s not much different from post-office boxes used by people who conduct business at home.

Virtual offices are well-known among business people, said Polfer, whose center offers seminars and counseling to small- business owners. But if customers feel they are being misled by the setup, then it’s up to them to do the research.

“It’s not a deception,” Polfer said. “That is your technical business address.”

He added that some business owners claim to have locations in Rome, Vienna or London, but sometimes those locations are nothing more than a virtual office.

“People like to do business with people they know or trust. Trust can come from a misplaced belief that you’re well-established. If that claim is important, you need to check on it,” he said.

Nick Mowery is the regional director for EBC Office Centers, which provides the virtual offices with a Celebration address. He calls himself the “cruise director,” and many clients said he fosters a networking relationship among the business people who work from there.

“The perception for folks who come to meet their clients, they don’t know or have to know it’s not their [client’s] office,” he said. “They want the impression. They want the Class A building.”

He said his company does little advertising. It sought business travelers through an advertisement in an airline magazine, but locally, EBC relies on word of mouth.

Some of his company’s clients started as virtual office-space owners. Once they felt established, they rented office space full time in the building. Bob Guidice, a real-estate agent, for Golfpark Properties, started his own business a couple of years ago with two associates and used virtual office space.

But his business grew and so did his company. Since then, seven more employees have come to work for the company, which now occupies two of the fifth floor’s larger offices.

“It’s a great way to make your business seem like a bigger company,” he said from his office, which overlooks Celebration and the lush greenery surrounding Walt Disney World. “We can grow into the office as we grow.”

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