News of: Wednesday, October 10 2007,
Amsterdam has moved to 5th position (coming from 6th) of the best places to locate a business, in the yearly European Cities Monitor published by Cushman & Wakefield.
The monitor is based on a survey amongst 500 large European companies.
The list is headed by London, Paris, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Amsterdam and Brussels. There is however little difference between the scores of Barcelona, Amsterdam and Brussels.
The list of key factors to locate a business is headed by 'Availability of qualified staff', 'Easy access to markets, customers or clients', 'The quality of telecommunications' and 'Transport links with other cities and internationally'.
Amsterdam has high scores for 'Languages spoken', 'Easy access to markets', 'External transport links' and 'Internal transport links'. It does not do very well on 'Cost of staff' and 'Price and availability of office space'.
New in the survey is the question about what city offers the best hotels and short-stay accommodation for expats and temporary staff. Amsterdam does not do very well here either. There is a lack of hotels, and short term lets of apartments are subject of fierce political debates in Amsterdam politics. Up to now, stays of shorter than 6 months qualify as 'illegal hotel stays'. However, the city has promised to come up with revised rules for short-stay accommodation before the end of the year. Possibly, residential stays from 1 week or longer will be made legal under certain conditions.
The entire report can be downloaded through this page.
