MCI opens up in Hangzhou and Portugal

Global PCO MCI Group has announced the launch of two new offices, MCI Hangzhou and MCI Portugal. MCI Hangzhou follows a joint venture partnership with two state-owned enterprises: Hangzhou Tourism Investment Co., Ltd and Hangzhou Zhonghe Investment Co., Ltd. While MCI Portugal strengthens MCI Group’s presence in Europe with an office in Lisbon. MCI Hangzhou and, with MCI China as majority shareholder, the new office will curate and create content for the company’s partners’ integrated space projects ‘Urban Constellation’ and ‘Qianjiang Century Park’ to make them more visible to audiences. Hangzhou, famous for the UNESCO World Heritage sites of West Lake and Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, is the capital of Zhejiang Province in east China. Host city of 2016 G20 Summit, Hangzhou demonstrated its ability to host large international conferences and has been awarded the 2022 Asian Games. The city is also home to the e-commerce giant Alibaba, and a hotbed for internet and tech startup communities. ICCA ranked Hangzhou next after Beijing and Shanghai between 2011 and 2015 and among the global Top 100 cities in 2015. Oscar Cerezales, Chief Operating Officer – Asia Pacific, MCI Group, said: “The new Hangzhou office is a strategic move for all partners to innovate value creation by taking on an in-depth and collaborative end-to-end approach for all stakeholders.” Frankie Gao, Managing Director, MCI China, added: “This joint venture is MCI China’s strategic development into second-tier cities by collaborating with domestic enterprises to engage local communities in co-creating platform and IP content.” Florence Chua, new Managing Director of MCI Hangzhou said the new joint venture would support the international activation of Chinese brands and companies based in the region. It would also, she said, help grow the communities around the partners’ property projects. With ICCA ranking Portugal among the top 10 cities in the world, the Iberian peninsula expansion is viewed as a step in the right direction to explore business within that national market. Sandrine Castres, General Director of MCI in Spain and Portugal, noted: “Our arrival in Portugal began with the presence of one of our business lines as a DMC (Destination Management Company), therefore, once we acquired the experience and having got to know the Portuguese market with a consolidated team, we expanded our portfolio of services as MCI Portugal. This is part of our expansion strategy in southern Europe and is a natural step in the Iberian Peninsula due to the growing demand from our international and Iberian customers who require more combined services both in Portugal and in Spain.” With the addition of these two new offices, MCI Group’s global presence has now grown to 60 offices in 31 countries.