MCI has launched an office in Hangzhou – a city noted as one of the most attractive in China for leisure visitors and incentive groups, while also the home of e-commerce giant Alibaba.
MCI Hangzhou follows a joint venture partnership with two state-owned enterprises: Hangzhou Tourism Investment and Hangzhou Zhonghe Investment. The office will employ 10 people and, along with a new office in Lisbon, Portugal, represents a major step in MCI expansion.
With MCI China as majority shareholder, the new office will curate and create content to raise the profile of two of the company’s partners’ projects: Urban Constellation and Qianjiang Century Park.
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 and the host city of the 2016 G20 Summit. The summit demonstrated Hangzhou’s ability to host large international conferences and the city is also preparing to welcome the 2022 Asian Games.
ICCA ranked Hangzhou next after Beijing and Shanghai between 2011 and 2015 and among the global Top 100 cities in 2015. Hangzhou is also a hotbed for internet and tech startup communities.
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 indepth 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, who will head MCI Hangzhou as managing director, said the new joint venture would support the international activation of Chinese brands and companies based in the region. She said it would also help grow the communities around the partners’ property projects.
With the addition of the two new offices, MCI Group’s global presence has grown to 60 offices in 31 countries and regions.
