A City to visit for business and leisure Business and leisure tourism has been another success story for Edinburgh built upon the established reputation of its festivals and the outstanding quality of its built and natural heritage.  In recent years, Edinburgh has sustained a top 10 position in the world conference league and collected numerous awards as the favourite city for the discerning readers of publications like Conde Nast Traveller, The Observer, The Guardian and Lonely Planet.  As a consequence, Edinburgh is a genuine year-round tourism city, its winter festivals illuminating the darker winter months and helping the city's hotels to sustain a year-round occupancy.  The city's attraction to visitors has been made more compelling by the availability of more non-stop flights to its airport, with 14 new UK and European services introduced in the last year alone (2006). With the most recognisable city centre of any European capital at its heart, Edinburgh has a unique shopping experience to offer residents and visitors alike.  Its retail mix has been enhanced by the arrival in town of Harvey Nichols and investment of more than half a billion pounds in new retail developments and infrastructure like Princes Mall and St James Centre.  Together with ambitious new plans for Princes Street, Edinburgh's retail renaissance is truly underway. A City for the future That investment is pouring into Edinburgh's transport infrastructure with a £150 million up-grade of Edinburgh's Waverley Station underway and a further £600 million planned in a new tram network which will link the city's waterfront and city centre with the airport by 2012.  A further investment of £750 million has been approved by the Scottish Executive for the Edinburgh Airport Rail Link (EARL)which will link Scotland's trunk rail network with the city and its airport, delivering a cost-benefit ratio of £2.16for every £1 spent. On the Waterfront, major changes are underway, transforming an area of the city previously starved of investment into a £3.5 billion centre of business, retail and leisure activity on a 700-acre site.  Waterfront Edinburgh will create over a million square feet of commercial, retail and hotel space, complementing the construction of 5,300 homes and over 250,000 square feet of cultural and leisure space.  Further along the shoreline at Leith, Forth Ports is investing in residential, retail and tourism facilities centred upon a proposal for an international cruiseliner terminal. Bold and ambitious developments like these are synonymous with a city with confidence in there sourcefulness of its people.  In Edinburgh Park, the city hosts one of the premier business centres in the UK and the Edinburgh Science Triangle is an alliance of some of the brightest and best researchers, academics and scientists in the country. Together, our science parks are scheduled to deliver £750 million additional economic benefit to Scotland each year.