THE PANEL:
AIRLINE CHIEFS
Robert Deluce is president and chief executive of Porter Airlines; Rafael Sánchez-Lozano is CEO of the Spanish airline Iberia.
FREQUENT FLIERS
Bay Street veteran Chyanne Fickes is vice-president of investments at Stone Asset Management; franchising expert Larry Carnell, of Marietta, Ga., delivers keynote addresses on the convention circuit with friends Suze Orman and Donald Trump; Brian Kelly leads campus recruiting for a large Wall Street investment bank and writes the popular blog, ThePointsGuy.com.
MEETINGS EXPERTS
Don Jones, president of Exper!ence it, in Toronto, produces events for Fortune 500 companies; Allen J. Sheinman is managing editor of Meetings & Conventions magazine.
BUSINESS TRAVEL PROS
Alice Marshall founded New York- and Los Angeles-based travel PR firm Alice Marshall Public Relations; Zane Kerby, senior vice-president of the National Business Travel Association, organizes several conventions and meetings a year; Francis Liu is president of one of Canada's largest specialist China agencies, Wonder International Travel in Montreal.
1. BEST OVER ALL: NEW YORK
Sure, it’s expensive, and tricky to get in and out of through delay-prone JFK, La Guardia or Newark airports; but despite its foibles, and because of its fabulousness, New York gets the nod as best for business in 2011. Airline chiefs Robert Deluce and Rafael Sánchez-Lozano praise its international flair, investment expert Chyanne Fickes and Mr. Deluce extol the shopping, while event organizer Don Jones endorses the Manhattan-area IBM Palisades Executive Conference Center.
TRIP TIP: If there’s no time for a show and sightseeing, combine them: “Experience: The Ride” is ferrying audiences around Manhattan to see actors perform on street corners, on a bus primped with stage lights and stadium seats (experiencetheride.com).
2. BEST FOR CONVENTIONS: DENVER
The mile-high city is no longer a pit-stop en route to the slopes of Vail, says Zane Kerby, who has booked the NBTA’s 40th annual convention there for 2011. Denver won him over for its central U.S. location and cheap flights into Denver International Airport, a hub for United Airlines and discounter Southwest Airlines. Most hotels, including a new Four Seasons, are within walking distance of the Colorado Convention Center. The Pepsi Center – nicknamed The Can – was the site of the 2008 National Democratic Convention.
TRIP TIP: Denver’s travel taxes – a measure of accommodation, rental car and airport taxes – are some of the lowest in the U.S., according to an NBTA 2010 study Travel Taxes in the U.S: The Best and Worst Cities to Visit.
3. PRO-BUSINESS: SAO PAULO
Sao Paolo is the trendy host of soccer’s 2014 World Cup. And says business travel expert Zane Kerby, it’s a “business-friendly” city with a booming economy and dense concentration of multinational firms’ Latin American headquarters. Plenty of world-class events entertain visitors in this city of 11 million, from annual winter and summer fashion weeks showcasing skimpy bikinis to a carnival as sassy as Rio de Janeiro’s (www.embratur.gov.br/site/en/home/index.php).
TRIP TIP: A vast private helicopter fleet airlifts executives from the financial district’s famed Paulista Avenue, past daily 200-plus-kilometre traffic jams. When the work is done, fly for a mini-trip to Unique Garden Spa and Resort, in Cantareira State Park, just outside the city (uniquegarden.com.br).
4. BEST SIGHTSEEING: ISTANBUL
Views of the Bosphorus from the infinity pool of Ciragan Palace Kempinski Istanbul – a hotel built in 1719 originally as an imperial palace – clinched Ms. Fickes’s view of Istanbul as a “stupendous” place for meetings. Her group visited the Blue Mosque; the Basilica Cistern, a subterranean waterworks; and shopped the famous Grand Bazaar (grandbazaaristanbul.org).
TRIP TIP: Build ample free time into events abroad. Too often, participants flown to an exotic destination can’t enjoy it because “organizers feel pushed to use every second for an event,” says Mr. Jones.
5. MOST EXOTIC: MUMBAI
After checking out a client’s Himalayan village walking experiences, Alice Marshall spent an “extremely moving” two nights at the Taj Mahal Palace, one of two hotels targeted in Mumbai’s 2008 terror attacks. “They just had reopened the palace wing with a memorial to the victims,” Ms. Marshall recalls. “Everything was so fresh but the memories lingered.” The city, she recalls, was “glitzy and modern in the sweeping grand skyscrapers and Vashi Bridge, with a definite nod to the old” in well-preserved colonial buildings, such as the Victorian Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station (www.maharashtratourism.gov.in/).
