Originally Posted by
jspira
I have only had a limited amount of time to review the data so far but it seems that car rental prices were higher than average (it's possible that people rent more expensive cars, for example, to impress during their fund-raising attempts) and that did contribut to pushing the cost up.
It's also a question of what people spend on dinner and entertainment. In some circles a few $200 bottles of wine is standard.
The study is based on actual expenses, so individual habits play heavily in this respect.
Car hire is pretty darn cheap there, even compared to other US cities - a random look with one company gives a full size SUV (aka somewhat excessive for your average business user) for ~ $500-600 M-F. New York on the other hand, would be around $750-900 for the same week / days.
$200 bottles of wine are completely and utterly normal in dozens of cities around the world. In some circles $200
0 bottles can be considered a normal business expense.
My last company, with offices in Silicon Valley as well as all over the world, had an expense 'bible' and I assure you, it didn't even make the top 50 destinations in terms of lodging, car rental, food & beverage and entertainment costs. Other major US cities, Asia and Europe all had plenty of much more expensive cities. Plus multiple destinations is South America and Africa where the 'cost of doing business' involved armoured vehicles and/or armed guards - that adds up quickly, v that luxury sedan in Santa Clara
I was intruiged by where the data came from, and frankly, the fact the CEO & President, and COO of Concur both lied to shareholders (and their clients etc) including in corporate financial documents about their educational background (having a degree, where their degree was from etc) sums it up for me that they are hardly a company to be relied upon (that would be the first article that came up, I had to dig a bit further for the following!).
Add in this article from the WSJ last year, with data from the exact same company, and it appears Santa Clara doesn't even feature in the top 25 most visited US cities according to their own data, and it makes me wonder if 1 person (or company) had a REALLY expensive business trip, and that is in fact the data, rather than averages of thousands of business travellers? Or did something major happen in Santa Clara in the last 12 months that I wasn't aware of (I'd be surprised, having family in San Jose!)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...303183470.html
WSJ 2011 "New York generates the most travel and entertainment expense reports—and is also the most expensive. The average hotel-room rate in New York was $198, well ahead of No. 2 Washington, D.C., at $173. The average tab when travelers dine alone in New York was $68. That's still cheaper than Copenhagen, which at $82 per meal is the most expensive city in the world for business dining—higher than Paris, Tokyo, New York and Sydney".
But seeing as how this seems to pass for journalism...
"Etobicoke, Cananda is the most expensive place on earth to go for a business dinner because there is a restaurant that sells Mouton Rothschild from 1893 and Chateau d’Yquem from 1918" (the latter, ~ $4000 retail (ie before restaurant mark up) a bottle" (and I am sure some businessman sometime or another has bought a similaly priced bottle there (put it this way, their 'economy selection' features wine up to $200!) and tried (perhaps successfully, who knows!) to expense it!