Text Boyd Farrow
Our round-up of what’s happening in the business world across Europe
Table hopping
Business breakfast
Hamburg Okay, your company accountant might not turn somersaults if you book a room at the Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, one of Europe’s most luxurious venues, but that doesn’t mean you can’t schedule a first-class business breakfast at the hotel’s impressive
Café Condi (9-14 Neuer Jungfernstieg, tel. +49 (0)40 3494 3315) The elegant breakfast room is open for non-guests Monday to Saturday from 6.15am. Just don’t turn up in your dressing gown.
Business lunch
Prague Part of Nils Jebens’ slick Kampa Group, Square (5 Malostranske namesti, tel. +420 (0)296 826 114) is an efficient, modern restaurant that remains busy due to its changing seasonal offerings (the spring menu featured an extended selection of Spanish and Italian wines), its reasonable prices and its central location between Charles Bridge and Prague Castle. Should you tire of people-watching and nibbling tapas before your dining companions arrive, Square is also a wi-fi hotspot.
Business dinner
Barcelona Botafumeiro (81 Carrer Gran de Gràcia, tel. +34 93 218 4230) is widely considered to be the best seafood restaurant in Barcelona, offering the finest regional cuisine and priding itself on the freshness of its catches, which are either kept in large tanks or flown in daily from Galicia. The restaurant has earned its reputation due, in part, to its comfortable, baroque-style dining room and the attentive customer service, which mean that reservations are usually essential. The restaurant has seven private rooms and the staff are skilled at planning special business dinners for when privacy is more important than atmosphere.
Between meetings in…
Rome
If your meetings finish early and you fancy squeezing in a sliver of culture before your apéritif, remember that the Roman Forum (Via dei Fori Imperiali, tel. +39 06 3996 7600) stays open from 9am to 7.30pm until 31 August.
Admission to the Forum is free and it costs €8 for a combined Palatine and Colosseum ticket. The last admission is an hour before closing. On the other hand, ultra-cool designer shopping emporium TAD (155a Via del Babuino, tel. +39 06 3269 5131, taditaly.com) also stays open until 7.30pm from Mondays to Fridays (10:30am to 8pm on Saturdays and 12:00pm to 8pm on Sundays) if you prefer looking at shiny, new things.
Working late: Moscow
Flight delayed, but too wired to work? Head for a branch of Planeta Fitness, two of which are open around the clock (6 Malaya Dmitrovka, tel. +7 (0)495 933 1124 and 9 Bolshoi Kislovsky tel. +7 (0)495 933 7100). A personal trainer can be arranged if you book a session before 10pm, and both centres have Olympic-sized swimming pools. Alternatively, check out the 24-hour bar below the ultra-trendy Denis Simachev boutique (12/2 Stoleshnikov Pereulok, +7 (0)495 629 8085). Cocktails from €4.75 (RUB 165).
Birmingham
With Harvey Nichols, Hugo Boss and Emporio Armani on the doorstep, it’s easy to see why Birmingham’s Malmaison (1 Wharfside Street, tel. +44 (0)121 246 5000, malmaison-birmingham.com) has become the bolt-hole of choice for stylish out-oftowners with serious shopping habits. The hotel is next to the Mailbox, a designer enclave housed in a converted Royal Mail sorting office, so a spot of retail therapy between meetings is practically mandatory.
It’s also near Brindleyplace, the Alexandra Theatre and the Birmingham Rep, although it’s questionable whether you’ll want to leave your room at all. Decked out in a sleek, minimalist style, the rooms have free internet access, power showers and crisp linen bedding. If you’re flexing the company’s plastic, book into the executive suite – the additional lounge can accommodate meetings for up to 10 people. There are also five conference rooms downstairs and free wi-fi internet access in the bar and lobby.
One to watch… Soho House
London’s private members’ club Soho House (sohohouse.com) plans to open at least two clubs a year over the next five years in a multimillion euro bid to become the world’s most fashionable private members’ club network. Openings in London’s Shoreditch as well as LA and Miami this year will be followed by branches in Berlin, Istanbul and Madrid in 2008. Soho House, which already has an ultra-cool New York outpost, also plans ventures in Tokyo, Shanghai, Cairo and Sydney by 2010. The Berlin club, a Bauhaus-designed building in the city’s Prenzlauer Berg, which was used by the Nazi Party and later as the East German Communist Party’s headquarters, will feature a 42-seat cinema, a swimming pool, a rooftop fitness club, bars, restaurants and upscale apartments on two floors. Membership costs around €900 annually.
Spotlight on…
Barcelona’s break with convention
With Richard Rogers becoming the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, it’s the perfect time to check out his Hesperia Tower and Convention Centre (144 Gran Via, tel. +34 93 413 5000, hesperiatower.com), an ultra-modern 280-room hotel that’s just a couple of minutes’ drive from the Fira centre, in the west of Barcelona. Apart from the view, the hotel’s strongest asset is its business and meeting facilities. The Hesperia has a huge array of meeting spaces on three levels. The auditorium holds up to 500 people and has six simultaneous translation booths and full audio-visual equipment. The Great Hall holds up to 1,600 people and has an outdoor terrace, while the 21 other meeting rooms can handle meetings of between 20 and 2,000. Each has high-tech equipment, and complimentary wi-fi access is available throughout the hotel, including in the guest rooms. Visitors who don’t have a club room can pay €60 per day to use the club lounge, which has boardrooms for meetings plus free snacks and drinks all day. Guests are entitled to four hours a day in the boardroom, where there is a flat-screen TV, a DVD player and built-in laptops. Breakfast and tapas are also available. Guests on the club floors and suites can use the Health Club and Spa.
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