Palma de Mallorca may be a permanent fixture on airports’ summer departure boards but increasingly it’s also a year-round destination for people wanting to set up design, architecture and hospitality businesses.

This small Mediterranean city of about 400,000 people has almost everything you need: an airport minutes from the city centre with Europe-wide links; incubators and start-up hubs for entrepreneurs; a deep vein of craft and heritage; and a lot of money looking for projects. But while all that’s tempting, it’s the quality of life matched with the possibility of doing interesting work that has fostered a series of very creative businesses here. And, actually, many of their founders also like the city for what it lacks: hustle and hassle. It’s a place that, once summer ends, reverts to being more like a village.

Argentinians Juan Peralta and Mauricio Obarrio are perfect examples of Palma converts. They are sitting with their rescue dog Otto in the warm autumn sunshine outside their office-cum-atelier in an easy-to-miss courtyard when we arrive. The couple moved to the island in 2016 after Peralta visited his brother in Mallorca and knew instantly that he wanted to live there. They now run Contain, a young lighting-and-furniture company that has landed them numerous projects, including making 400 lights for the Hotel Riu Plaza España in Madrid.

“We were warned that locals will not buy from you if they don’t know you,” says Peralta, who is the advertising creative; Obarrio does the designing, working with local suppliers to source hand-blown glass, terrazzo and brass. “But we were lucky,” adds Peralta. “I think you need a supporter; one of our first customers was a Mallorquin family and then they told one friend about us and then another one... Our first 10 projects were for Mallorquins.”

Stresses? When you’re making small runs of products, says Obarrio, “it’s hard to get orders for parts to the front of the queue in summer, when everyone is busy. And you also have to get to know people to get their support. But now that they know the product, there’s trust.” In the same courtyard as Contain is the shop of Italian-born potter Roberto Paparcone. An architect by training, he studied in Delft and worked in Bilbao, Milan and Barcelona before taking a one-month pottery course seven years ago that spun him in a new direction. Three years ago he moved to Palma for a better life – and to focus on his new passion.

Sporting a black beanie and dressed in an apron bearing his brand’s moniker – his own name simply tweaked to Paparkone – he has an unhurried air. “It’s making pots; it’s the best relaxation,” he says. Like many of those who make a success of Palma, he’s found good clients on the island and is supplying finishing touches to hotel projects, as well as working on an idea with the Contain duo. Yet it’s clearly Palma and Mallorca that are the lure: “I have time to keep learning; to make everything by hand on my own. Sometimes when people place a big order, I say ‘No, it’s too much.’” He’s only just joking.

This pace of life sometimes bothers Tony Jiménez Roig, owner of fashion shops La Principal and Addict (he has a great eye and delivers a covetable line-up of menswear), as well as fashion label Mews. “Sometimes you want to feel hectic – and I have to leave to get new ideas, to feel inspired. This is not London or Madrid.”

And then there are the changes driven by the tourists and the people pouring in money. “We are suffering from a loss of character with so many generic businesses,” he says. “I like evolution but it’s small businesses that make a city interesting.” Yet he makes most of his money from those visitors, who account for about 80 per cent of his customers.

Still, there are plenty of enterprises that he believes do add value to the city. There’s Monge, a classic shoe brand that still manufactures on the island (although this once-great trade has almost dwindled away); coffee-roaster Mistral; and Colmado Sant Jaume, a reinvention of the traditional corner store by Maria José Aguilar Calzado, with all-Spanish products and aimed at locals, not just visitors. There are a lot of good things going on but Jiménez Roig says the island needs businesses that want to do more than turn a profit.

The Mallorquin capital is also attracting big names. Eddie Hart, one of the brothers who found success in London with the Barrafina group of Spanish restaurants, opened El Camino (Spanish for “The Path”) with partner-in-wine Samuel Gough in August 2018. Both men have deep Mallorcan links: Hart’s mother was born on the island and Gough’s great uncle, poet and novelist Robert Graves, was among its most famous residents.

Hart says that launching the €2m restaurant was a very different experience from any of his other ventures. “It took half the time to get this open compared with what it would have needed in the UK. In England you spend a lot of time and money on lawyers; here we got a two-page lease and that was it. The builders didn’t want to have meetings but to just get on with it. From start to finish it took just six months.”

Are they nervous about how the business will work in low season? No. It seems Palma has year-round customers: the Mallorquins come back from the beach in mid-September and many overseas second-home owners now visit on a regular basis. And anyway, this winter Gough is busy perfecting the wine list: “The island’s winemakers are making wines as good as anything in France.” Like everyone else, they seem very happy with their decision to make their business move and follow el camino that brings you to Palma.

“I remember when Greenville got its first Starbucks. That was a big deal,” says Marco Suarez, co-owner of Methodical Coffee, a sun-soaked coffee shop and roaster with industrial floors and whitewashed walls in Greenville, South Carolina. Just a few decades ago the city centre was a ghost town, with most retailers lured out to shopping centres in the suburbs. Today, Greenville – once the textile capital of the world – instead brims with opportunity. In 2016 it was the country’s fourth-fastest-growing city and it boasts the highest level of foreign investment per capita in the US.

Much of this is thanks to the hugely liveable urban centre. Greenville resurrected its downtown by focusing on pedestrians, slimming down main arteries in favour of tree-lined, walkable roads and using residential developments to inject life into the city centre. Swapping a busy vehicle bridge for a footbridge even revealed a 12-metre waterfall.

“It was the transformation of the natural space that drew people and paved the way for businesses like mine,” says Suarez, who returned to Greenville in 2014 following stints in San Francisco, New York and Atlanta in search of a higher quality of life. “The cost of living is low and it’s less stressful, while offering big-city amenities.”

“It’s also attracted something we never had before: tourists,” says the mayor, Knox White, explaining that the city is becoming a popular getaway for visitors from nearby Atlanta and Charlotte drawn by the bike trails, burgeoning cultural scene and mountainous scenery.

Further, the presence of major multinationals – Michelin’s North American headquarters and bmw’s biggest plant are in the area – gives the city cosmopolitan tastes and creates hospitality and retail opportunities unavailable in most similarly sized US cities.

One of the best examples of this is The Anchorage, a restaurant set up in early 2017 by restaurateurs Greg and Beth McPhee. Abandoning the meat-focused menu expected of South Carolina restaurants, they’ve focused on fresh, locally sourced vegetables and reaped the rewards. “Greenville has well-travelled, well-educated citizens who can support a business like ours while not being a saturated hospitality town like Charleston,” says Greg. It also has a pro-business mentality. “If you’re crazy enough to open a restaurant, the city is extremely helpful. From day one we had a direct line to city hall.”

To top things off, infrastructure is improving and the city has added a free tram route linking downtown to the Village of West Greenville, a buzzy arts district that’s home to both The Anchorage and gb&d, another food-based pioneer. Ultimately, experimenting is encouraged. “Most people in Greenville didn’t even know our waterfall existed,” says White. “The lesson is to find your own falls.”