Established on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1987, the MCI group originally specialised in conference organisation in the widest sense of the term. It has subsequently developed its business to include business tourism, now its second most important activity, event marketing and association management.

It has grown rapidly and today boasts 13 offices in Europe as well as a presence in Washington, Singapore and Dubai. It employs 365 people, including 57 based in Paris and 9 in Lyon.

I should point out that MCI only had 20 employees in France two years’ ago, whilst today we’ve almost 70 people working for us, explains Sarah Hassine, the company’s director of development. Lyon, where we do very little incoming business, was our first agency in France. We established an office there at the beginning of the 1990s and today it’s an important business centre for us. Within the organisation as a whole, the Lyon office is renowned for its excellent creative skills, from building websites, to producing CD-roms and creating exhibition stands .

MCI prides itself on being one of the leading European companies in the industry with the ability to respond to most situations because of its skill-base on the logistical front. This is true, regardless of group size, adds Sarah Hassine. We are excellent logisticians and we’re always extremely well organised, whether for a meeting of 15 people or for an event involving 8 000 or 10 000 people!

In order to manage the various different scenarios, MCI makes good use of its professional software programme to develop a specific package for each event resulting in a genuine made-to-measure selection of products. The movement of all these groups is also facilitated by the span of the company’s international offices as well as the by the services of its own travel agency, MCI France Voyages, which is responsible for ticketing.

MCI’s strength lies in its ability to offer complementary services resulting in a tailor-made response for each client. Most of our clients from the Rhône-Alpes region ask us to organise meetings outside of the area, notes Sarah Hassine. But we also organise events within the region, mainly around the theme of wine – which is what we did for the Cancer and Nutrition Conference organised in June 2001. We have a number of repeat clients, including Renault Trucks for their press trial events; Royal Canin for meetings and incentives mostly to Scotland; Mèrial for whom we’re organising a four-day seminar for 65 marketing colleagues next October; Case IH, for whom we’ve created a special challenge event aimed at promoting the sale of spare parts and after-sale services, plus the creation of a website for direct registration of the results as well as the transmission of information linked to the Parts & Services business, together with an incentive trip to Guadaloupe and Marie Galante; and the Rhône-Alpes Regional Union of Private Doctors for whom we’ve created various marketing projects as well as a meeting…

Bonus 1 : LSO International based in Lyon since 1997