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Global roaming: Sydney has ranked in the top 5 places in the world for digital nomads

There’s no shortage of cafés to work from in the Harbour City

Caitlyn Todoroski
Contributor
An interior shot at The Press Club showing the main dining area
Photograph: Graham Denholm
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Having only four weeks of annual leave out of a whole 52 kinda sucks. It actually really sucks. If you’re smart, you plan your time off around public holidays and long weekends, but when Monday rolls around and the office is calling, it’s hard not to dream of jetting off to a white sandy beach somewhere. It's a sentiment shared by many – in the last couple of years, there's big increase in the number of digital nomads, who roam both figuratively and literally.

It's a trend that's been taken up by workers across a range of fields, including people in marketing, graphic design and programming. They all have one thing in common – they can do their jobs from anywhere in the world (often from hotelscafés, co-working spaces – and yep, even the beach).

What you would expect is that digital nomads would gravitate to cheap destinations with summers that last year-round – but research done by one global co-working organisation, Instant Offices, determined that Sydney (despite being an expensive city) is one of the best places in the world for online gypsies.

Destinations around the globe were judged on factors like weather, affordability(!), internet speed and all-round quality of life. Sydney by far beat other Australian cities – the next highest-ranking Aussie city was Perth, in spot number 26. 

Wondering where else caters well to those on the move? Dubai, surprisingly, took out the number one spot – followed by Lisbon, Madrid and LA (to see the rest of the rankings, click here):  

  1. Dubai, UAE
  2. Lisbon, Portugal
  3. Madrid, Spain
  4. Los Angeles, US
  5. Sydney, Australia

Got the travel bug? We’ll see you on Zoom.

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