As corporate travel booms across Asia-Pacific, the concept of bleisure is gaining traction, spurring the region’s cities to better integrate opportunities for leisure amid busy business trips. The 2019 bleisure barometer: Asia’s best cities for work and recreation, sponsored by All Nippon Airways, reveals that while Asia’s best bleisure destinations provide the right balance of business activity, high-quality infrastructure and top-flight leisure experiences, a number of less obvious choices stand out as well.

Cities were scored out of five possible points, with scores tabulated from responses of a survey of 1,500 business travellers from around the world, asking them about a variety of factors impacting business travel, such as ease of transportation and availability of consumer goods and services. Scores were used to determine rankings as well as star groupings, with five-star cities scoring above the average and one-star cities scoring below.

One significant finding from the study is that Asia’s best cities for bleisure are not necessarily its most liveable. Although the specific questions used in the survey were inspired by ourGlobal Liveability Index, some striking differences emerge. For example, wealthy cities such as Auckland, New Zealand, and Adelaide, Australia, sit atop the league tables for liveability, but drastically underperform on bleisure. Meanwhile, Shanghai and Beijing, while rarely considered highly liveable, show their rising business might in the bleisure study, filling the four-star tier.