Dubai ranked 2nd best city in the world to work from home

Dubai: The ongoing pandemic has forced employees to reassess their priorities, with the main focus on finding a better balance between work and a higher quality of day-to-day lifestyle.

In a global report published on Thursday, the online platform for on-demand housing Nestpick released a study that revealed the best cities worldwide to live and work remotely from home.

Dubai was ranked in second place, while Melbourne topped the list for digital nomads out of 75 countries. These cities were then analysed according to three broad categories including costs and infrastructure, legislation and freedoms, livability, which made them attractive places to both relocate to and work remotely from.

Omer Kucukdere, founder and chief executive officer at Nestpick, said: “The global pandemic has caused many people to reassess their personal priorities, revealing the benefits of remote working flexibility and provoking the question ‘is it really possible to work from anywhere’ What we’ve seen through our study, however, is that technology and employers have moved faster than infrastructure, with many legal barriers still in place for migrants who want to bring their job with them.”

The Work-from-Anywhere Index also used data in their study to determine the cities that are not only the most attractive to foreign-employed workers, but also have the infrastructure and legislation in place to make it easy for them to live and work there. The resulting index offers insight into a broad range of factors encompassing costs, infrastructure, legislation and livability to reveal the cities best prepared to attract this new breed of work-from-anywhere resident.

“High-earners are leaving business-focused cities to live in places that offer better day-to-day lifestyles, taking their purchasing power with them. This trend will only become more popular as time goes on, so we believe that we will see more and more cities adapting to these new working conditions, and benefitting from the economic boost that these workers inject into their economies,” explained Kucukdere.

In October 2020, Dubai launched a unique new programme that enabled overseas remote working professionals to live in Dubai while continuing to serve their employers in their home country.

The move provides remote workers – and their families - the opportunity to re-locate, on an annual basis, to one of the world’s leading tourism and business destinations and enjoy a safe and high-quality lifestyle underpinned by a strong digital infrastructure that provides seamless connectivity.

Top 10 cities for digital nomads

Source: Nestpick