The business traveler will be best served in either the Midtown or Wall Street areas. Wall Street, at the southern end of Manhattan, lays claim to the New York Stock Exchange and hundreds of corporate offices in streets lined with skyscrapers. Name an industry, it's represented here. If you want to be close to that board meeting, with plenty of places to meet for dinner and after dinner drinks, Wall Street will serve you well. In the evenings, many of the smaller shops will be closed, but the South Street Seaport, with its collection of restaurants, clothiers and galleries maintains the late night New York atmosphere.

If you plan to shack up on Wall Street, your best bets include the Marriott Financial Center and Holiday Inn Downtown. Like the Wall Street area, Midtown houses a great number of corporate entities. Midtown, the area centered around Grand Central Terminal at Park Avenue and 42nd Street, boasts easy access to transportation. The business traveler can use a Midtown hub to get to and from the airport, to travel to the many corporate headquarters that are just outside the city, for instance in Westchester County or Northern New Jersey. And if you want to see more of New York City than just the inside of a boardroom, it is relatively easy to travel to other areas of the city from this central location.

Midtown boasts hundreds of lodging options for business travelers, including the Hotel Inter-Continental, Grand Hyatt New York, Hotel Edison, Algonquin Westpark Hotel, and the Courtyard Midtown East -- just to name a few. Looking for a more intimate experience? Try the Hotel Bedford, where you can relax in a European atmosphere.