10 weirdest business meeting places Hong Kong executives used

"Meeting starts in 10 minutes at the rollercoaster".

According to a new survey Regus, although it is rare nowadays to step into a coffee shop without seeing at least one meeting in full swing, some Hong Kong executives are more intrepid in their quest to be able to work from anywhere – literally. It has revealed some extremely unconventional settings which Hong Kong respondents report they have used for business meetings – including roller coasters, prisons and baseball parks.

In the study, more than 26,000 respondents from over 90 countries were asked about the strangest place they had ever had a business meeting. Some of the global responses were just as offbeat as those of Hong Kong respondents: a respondent in mainland China reported holding a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, while an enterprising Indian related a meeting that took place while tiger-watching in a national park. Globally, the oddest venues included a convent, an old railway tunnel, a nursery and a maggot farm.

While some of the locations revealed by the study seem more suited to an action-packed thriller, others indicate that there's literally nowhere that businesspeople consider off-limits for a meeting, including aircraft hangars, submarines, mineshafts, out-of-service elevators and even a disused shrimp boat.

Hong Kong executives' top 10 strangest meeting places:

• A baseball park
• A hot spring
• A military tank
• An ice bar
• A ham drying facility
• A rollercoaster
• A shrimp farming pond
• A prison
• A hog slaughterhouse
• A stairwell

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 stranger: toilets and bathrooms feature more than once. At least one person reported having a business meeting on a rooftop while another unfortunate individual was subjected to a meeting in hospital.

On the upside, swimming pools, ski resorts, beaches, golf courses and yachts were all cited, showing that business meetings aren't always such hard work.

"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 businesspeople have become," said John Henderson, Chief Finance Officer, Regus Asia-Pacific. "However, some of the venues revealed in this research may not be to everyone's liking, and some certainly raise questions in terms of safety and professionalism. For the more conventional at heart, Regus offers a huge network of professional and productive meeting spaces around the world, helping them meet their goals without the distractions of a maggot farm or a rollercoaster."