You might want to consider booking a date in Tokyo for your next roadshow, as financial executives name the city’s luxurious Shangri-La hotel as their favorite in the world.
Institutional Investor’s World’s Best Hotels rankings run down the top 100 hotels chosen by financial executives as their preferred places to stay while attending meetings abroad.
Opened in 2009, the modern Shangri-La Hotel in Tokyo takes top spot in the rankings. The Shangri-La Group, which first opened property in Singapore, currently operates 78 hotels around the world.
The Tokyo hotel’s presidential suite – available for $19,590, plus tax and service, per night – offers guests a 2,896 square foot living space, complete with 1,000-thread-count cotton pillowcases, a 42-inch television and an unparalleled view of Mount Fuji and the Imperial Palace Gardens.
Second place goes to Buenos Aires’ Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt, where guests are treated to a personalized dinner menu, tango lessons, the hotel’s own fine art collection and the possibility of a polo match. The St Regis hotel in New York City rounds out the top three.
The top 50 hotel destinations around the world mapped (click for larger version):
Source: Institutional Investor
Twenty-three of the top 50 hotels are to be found in the US, with six Four Seasons hotels found among the top 30 destinations worldwide. Africa does not host any of the most desirable hotels, but several are found in Europe, with Budapest, Zurich, Prague and Geneva all emerging as attractive places to stay.
Institutional Investor reports, however, that most wealthy travelers look beyond luxury surroundings in favor of ‘unique travel experiences, personalized attention and out-of-this-world accommodation’, and are apparently willing to pay almost anything for the pleasure. Whether such expenses can fit into an IR department’s roadshow budget remains to be seen.
Philippe Frey, general manager of the Palacio Duhau, explains that such an experience is a top priority for guests from the C-suite. ‘We have a number of guests for whom money is not an issue,’ he says.
The Institutional Investor survey polled 208 senior financial executives from companies in 44 different countries. On average, they each spend 40 nights of the year in hotels.
