Copenhagen - 2nd best city for business travel

The Economist Intelligence Unit's worldwide business trip index 2006 has ranked Copenhaged as Europe's second - and the world's 17th - best city for business travel.

Wondering where to hold you conference in 2006? Or want to know what's in store when touching down to meet a client? To help answer questions like the The Economist Intelligence Unit has developed a business trip index for 127 cities worldwide, ranking the best - and worst - destinations for business travel. In the latest index Copenhagen is ranked as the best place in Scandinavia, the second best in Europe - surpassed only by Vienna in Austria - and the 17th best city in the world.

Canadian cities take the top three slots, with Vancouver just ahead of Calgary and Toronto. They are not the cheapest places to visit on business, but they do have the right mix of ingredients to please the business traveller. Surveys of this kind usually focus exclusively on costs, ignoring the factors that help make business tolerable, or even a pleasure - after all, conventions, training corporate meetings and seminars are now more common reasons for business travel than simple sales calls. With this in mind, crime, climate, transport, hotel facilities along with airport distances all play a part in The Economist's index.

But of course the cost matters. That explains why London, a global business centre and one of the world's most visited cities, is ranked back in 72nd place - close to Shenzhen in China and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. London is one of the world's costliest cities and an overloaded transport infrastructure and the crime associated with many large cities also pull it down.

Source: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/BUSINESS_TRIP_INDEX.pdf