For the third year in a row, Vienna, Austria, has been named the world’s most livable city in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Global Liveability Index 2024.
The assessment scores 173 cities around the world on 30 indicators divided into five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Vienna received perfect scores of 100 in every category besides culture and environment, only losing 6.5 points due to the city’s “lack of major sporting events.”
If scoring was up to me, though, I’d give Vienna full points across the board—and extra credit for the sunny weather.
I recently spent a week in the world’s most livable city on a “Past Meets Present” fam trip with the Vienna Convention Bureau (VCB) exploring all Vienna has to offer for meetings and events, from new and historic hotels and palaces turned into event venues to unique group activities and delicious Viennese food. (Fun fact: Vienna claims to be the only city with a cuisine of its own!)
One week simply wasn’t enough time to experience all the magic of Vienna, but it only took 24 hours for me to see why the City of Music is ranked No. 1 on the EIU’s list. The world’s most livable city is a place I’d happily call home one day, and it’s undoubtedly the perfect home for your next international group gathering, too.
As the legendary Billy Joel puts it, “Vienna waits for you.”
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Why Groups Should Meet in Vienna
During a networking brunch at the Aurora Rooftop Bar atop Andaz Vienna Am Belvedere–A Concept by Hyatt, I had the opportunity to sit down with Anita Paic, head of the Vienna Convention Bureau, to discuss all the reasons Vienna is an ideal fit for meetings and events.
The city draws a variety of groups, with business from the congress and government segments historically being one of the strongest. Vienna’s incentive market has been developing as well, and group gatherings have shown that Vienna is “really on the map for many different brands and a variety of different businesses,” Paic said, but reaching a U.S. audience has been tricky.
“Especially for the U.S. market, one crucial part is that Vienna has not been on the top-three list so far as a meetings destination,” Paic said. “People overseas don’t necessarily see Vienna as a primary destination, and they do miss something. They miss a lot.
“If you look at Vienna, you have the perfect combination of past and present,” Paic continued, emphasizing the reason behind the fam trip’s “Past Meets Present” theme. “I know there are other destinations in Europe that have that, but the rich heritage we have in this destination, combined with the infrastructure, the safety and the cosmopolitan approach, as well as sustainability and the excellent connectivity we have, are just a few reasons why Vienna is a perfect fit [for groups].”
Transportation is also incredibly easy in Austria’s capital city. The Vienna International Airport (VIE) sits just outside the city and is a quick 20- to 30-minute drive to the city center, and it’s possible to get from one side of Vienna to the other within half an hour. (Our group took a historic 1920s tram ride with the Wiener Tramwaymuseum to dinner in one of Vienna’s more local neighborhoods one night, and the ride was almost too quick!)
“The infrastructure you can experience is just overwhelming,” Paic said. “When you are traveling with public transportation, it’s very easy, very affordable and always on time. There are no long wait times, and it’s an easy system to understand.
“Something that, especially nowadays, is also very important is how safe you feel in a destination,” Paic continued. Vienna ranks near the top of that list, too. On the 2024 Global Peace Index, Austria ranked No. 3 out of 163 countries, making it one of the safest and most peaceful destinations in the world.
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Vienna Hotels Fit for Groups
On day one, we checked into the luxurious and historic Grand Hotel Wien, located just off the famous Ringstrasse, a circular grand boulevard surrounding the historic Innere Stadt (first district) of Vienna.
The 205-room property opened in 1870, making it one of the oldest luxury hotels in the city, and is within walking distance of the world-renowned Vienna State Opera and Kärntner Straße, or “Carinthian Street,” one of the city’s most popular shopping areas.
Grand Hotel Wien also features approximately 11,000 square feet of gathering space across 12 meeting rooms, including the “Quadrille,” one of Vienna’s biggest ballrooms and named after the famous dance of late 18th- and 19th-century Europe. (The lovely Joachim Winterl, director of convention sales at Grand Hotel Wien, even gave the group a brief waltz lesson!)
We spent the second half of our trip at the recently opened Imperial Riding School, Autograph Collection, a Marriott property that began welcoming guests in May following four years of dormancy and a €45 million (approximately $48.3 million), 18-month renovation.
The 342-room hotel is rich in history. The original Palais Harrach, built in 1727, became a military riding school under Emperor Franz Joseph I. It has housed one of Vienna’s largest cinemas and was used as a garage for postal buses. Today, the site is home to the first international Autograph Collection hotel in Austria and offers 13 function rooms that combine the hotel’s original facade with a contemporary feel.
While we only had keycards for these two hotels, the VCB gave us access to many others, including:
- Palais Coburg, a historic site reimagined into a hotel featuring 34 suites, a spa, two restaurants, a garden, 13 event rooms, a wine cellar and 60,000 bottles of wine. The building, which dates to the pre-1800s, survived the demolition of Vienna’s city walls, but remnants of the fortifications remain throughout the hotel.
- Park Hyatt Vienna, a five-star hotel featuring 146 guest rooms, including 42 suites and more than 8,600 square feet of customizable spaces. The property was originally constructed between 1913-1915 as the Lower Austrian Escompte Bank and features design elements that reflect its history throughout. (The hotel’s pool is located behind the bank’s original vault door and its onsite restaurant, The Bank Brasserie & Bar, pays homage to the building’s past.)
- Almanac Palais Vienna, a newly opened boutique property set inside a pair of former palais dating to 1871. The 111-room hotel seamlessly blends its history with contemporary amenities and offers nearly 2,700 square feet of modern meeting space as well as six opulent state rooms, known as the Heritage Rooms, that were once utilized by the noble family of Henckel von Donnersmarck.
- Andaz Vienna Am Belvedere–A Concept by Hyatt, a 303-room property including 44 suites that’s located in the new Quartier Belvedere district and nearby cultural attractions like Belvedere Palace. The hotel features a nearly 7,600-square-foot ballroom, a 2,600-square-foot multifunctional event space and the 3,767-square-foot Upper Belvedere Terrace overlooking the City of Music.
- The Hoxton, Vienna, situated in a 1950s building that was one home of the Chamber of Commerce of Vienna. The 196-room property features an American-style bistro, a rooftop bar and pool, a terrace and a basement speakeasy. The Apartment, the hotel’s bespoke meeting space, comes with three statement rooms that can be booked together or separately, or groups can utilize the property’s live events auditorium for large-scale entertainment.
- Rosewood Vienna, located in the old town of Vienna and surrounded by sights including St. Stephen’s Cathedral and St. Peter’s Catholic Church. The imperial-yet-modern property offers 63 guest rooms, 32 suites, numerous meeting and event venues and the rooftop Neue Hoheit Brasserie & Bar, where our group enjoyed an authentic Austrian-style dinner in the Garden Room for our final evening together.
Other notable hotels include Hotel Sacher, home of the world famous Sachertorte chocolate cake; Hotel Bristol, a historic 150-room hotel founded in 1892 that has hosted many international celebrities, socialites and royalty over the centuries; and the Vienna Marriott Hotel, featuring 294 guest rooms and 11 meeting rooms, including the approximately 4,600-square-foot Ballroom, with space for 500 theater-style or 1,000 for a cocktail reception.
[Related: Recent Major Hotel Brand Debuts and More Global Property News (May 2024)]
Offsite Venues in Vienna
Vienna’s lodging options are abundant, but there’s even more for groups to explore outside the hotels.
As Paic mentioned, one characteristic of Vienna that makes the city so special is its unique blend of past and present, and a variety of the city’s offsite venues showcase this combination effortlessly:
- Hofburg Palace and the HOFBURG Vienna Congress & Events Centre: Situated in the very heart of Vienna, this former imperial palace offers 35 rooms on nearly 183,000 square feet of space and can accommodate groups from 100 to 3,000 people.
- Spanish Riding School: Just next door to Hofburg Palace, this Austrian institution is dedicated to the preservation of classical dressage and the training of Lipizzaner horses. Reception rooms can accommodate up to 120, or groups of up to 600 can rent the Winter Riding School and transform the horse-riding space into a unique event venue.
- Palais Ferstel: Originally built in 1860 for the Austrian National Bank and stock exchange, this opulent building is home to the iconic Café Central coffeehouse and multiple event spaces for groups of 80 to 700. The Grosser Ferstelsaal is a ballroom-type space shaped like the bow of a ship and has walls lined with columns topped with sculptures of faces making different expressions.
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Tay's Vienna Travel Tips
Besides writing, traveling is my biggest passion. If I am in a new city, I want to see and experience it all, and I’m not afraid to walk 20,000 steps a day to check off everything on my destination bucket list.
When I learned I’d be traveling to Vienna for work, I immediately decided to extend my stay through the weekend to give myself a chance to explore on my own. Solo traveling as a young woman is always scary, but I have never felt safer alone in a new city than I did in Vienna, and that gave me the confidence I needed to do things I typically wouldn’t do on my own.
For those looking to add a little bleisure to their Vienna meeting experience, here are a few of my tips and recommendations following my time in the world’s most livable city:
- Visit Vienna Museums: The city has more than 100 museums to explore, which can make it hard to choose. Thankfully, MuseumsQuartier Wien (Vienna’s Museums Quarter) is easily walkable and puts many of the city’s top museums in one place, including the Museum of Natural History Vienna and Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, one of the city’s art museums. I explored two museums while in town: the Wien Museum, which was originally founded in 1887 as the Historical Museum of the City of Vienna and currently showcases centuries of the city’s history; and the Albertina, another art museum known for its compilation of graphic arts.
- Try New Foods: In my big Italian family, we tend to stick to big Italian meals. So, I have very little experience with schnitzel and sausage, but one of the most exciting things about visiting a new destination is trying new foods. And in a city that claims to be the only one with a cuisine of its own, you’re bound to find something tasty. One group dinner the VCB team organized was at a traditional Austrian restaurant called Pfarrwirt, which features a lengthy menu of Viennese cuisine. The most surprising dinner we experienced was at the vegan fine dining restaurant JOLA, an intimate space featuring a frequently changing menu of tasting dishes and an open kitchen in which guests can watch and speak to the chefs.
- Take a Guided Tour: Yes, you will automatically be identified as a tourist, but the best way to familiarize yourself with a city is to learn from the locals. AlpineFoxes is a Vienna-based tour company offering public and private tours that focus both on Vienna’s top attractions as well as the city’s hidden gems. AlpineFoxes was founded by Vienna native Claudia Muchitsch, who runs the company alongside her husband Martin. I had the pleasure of taking a private three-hour walking tour with Claudia throughout the entire city and learned more from her than I ever would’ve exploring on my own, and her passion for the city she calls home makes her tours even more special. Plus, I made a new friend! (Hi, Claudia!)
- Take Public Transportation: I am not ashamed to admit that I’m very directionally challenged and definitely one of those Gen Zers who wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without Apple Maps, but another efficient way to familiarize yourself with a new destination is to use public transportation. I took Vienna trams all over the city, learned more about how the locals get around and saved money by avoiding overpriced Uber rides.
There were so many highlights throughout the Vienna fam trip that I can’t pick just one, but none of those highlights would’ve been possible without the incredible VCB team, who organized an experience in their city that made it hard to say goodbye—both to them and to Vienna.
All in all, it’s more than true that “Vienna waits for you” (and your groups!).
