Friday August 16, 2013
KUALA LUMPUR: A new survey by Regus, the provider of flexible workspaces, revealed that for some Malaysian executives, meetings can take place in the oddest of places.
Does a meeting in a massage parlour sound kosher? Well, it’s been done by Malaysians before. As have deserts, landfills and construction sites.
Regus interviewed more than 26,000 respondents from over 90 countries, asking them the strangest place they have had ever had a business meeting, and found some of the oddest venues included a convent, an old railway tunnel, a nursery and a maggot farm.
“The strange places that people find themselves in for business meetings, from bathrooms to abandoned buildings and beaches show just how open-minded and flexible people have become in the business world,” says Jonh Henderson, Regus regional director for Asia Pacific.
“The venues revealed in this research may not be to everyone’s liking, and some certainly give pause for thought in terms of safety and professionalism. Luckily for less adventurous professionals, a huge network of professional and productive meeting places is available around the world helping them focus on targets rather than their unusual surroundings.”
Some of the locations revealed by the study seem more suited to an action-packed thriller, others indicate that there’s literally nowhere that business people consider off-limits for a meeting. They include in an airline hangar, on a submarine, down a mine, in an out-of-service elevator and on an old shrimper.
Ten Strangest Meeting Places Globally
In the bath
At a cycling event
In a cave
A rubbish dump
At a wedding banquet
On a sleigh during a sleigh ride
A Brussels sprout field
On a Navy warship
In a shed
In an office pantry
Ten Strangest Meeting Places in Malaysia
A construction site
A plantation
A camp site
A Norwegian castle
A dive centre
The middle of a desert
An oil palm estate
A landfill site
Under a tree
A massage parlour
While landfill sites are unlikely to become a hit in Malaysia any time soon, a massage parlour, it would seem, is quite palatable. More common grab-a-meeting venues seem to be cars, coffee shops and hotel rooms, while planes and airports are also popular choices reflecting the international nature of business today.
However, it gets more curious: toilets and bathrooms feature in the answers, too, while one unfortunate individual was subjected to a meeting at a hospital.
On the upside, restaurants, hot tubs, beaches and boats all feature, showing that business meetings aren’t always such hard work.