Incentives and meetings

Timothée de Roux is Deputy Managing Director of Châteaux & Hôtels Collection. He highlights the brand's values and strengths in the seminar market.

Identity card Currency: euro. Dialling code: +32. Getting there Paris-Brussels: A Thalys train leaves Paris-Gare du Nord every half-hour or so for...

Belgium is a stone's throw from Paris, and it's another world. There's Brussels, of course, which covers its walls with comic strip characters from the Ligne claire movement and is rehabilitating places that survived the destructive madness of the last century. But there's also bubbling Antwerp, the Flemish city among the Flemish, which draws on its history to better address our times. And it doesn't hesitate to privatise extravagant places, or to entrust its future aesthetics to renowned architects!

With a rich colonial history that has long nurtured Far Eastern fantasies, and with all its communities - Malay, Chinese, Indian and Tamil - making it a melting pot that is unique in Asia, Malaysia has everything to bewitch the traveller. In Kuala Lumpur, the vibrant capital, as in Penang, the former trading post on the Straits, Malay spells still work.

Identity card Formalities: passport valid for 6 months after the date of return. Time difference: +6 h in summer, +7 h in winter....

Abdul Rahim Haron is Director of the Malaysian Tourist Office in France.

Regus has reached a new milestone in its global expansion: the opening of a new business centre in Nepal means that the flexible workspace provider now has a presence in one hundred countries around the world.

A new hotel booking tool has arrived on the Web: GroupCorner is aimed specifically at group bookings, for meetings, seminars and corporate events, as well as associations and other leisure groups.

A packed cultural agenda, an industrial heritage revisited as a venue for exhibitions and receptions and endless nightlife... The Istanbul programme invites you to step away from Ottoman splendour and discover a metropolis in tune with the times.

The Singapore Tourism Board and Singapore Airlines (SIA) are organising an eductour to introduce French Corporate Travel Managers to the destination from 27 to 30 June.

On 8 May, the French branch of the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) clarified its medium-term strategy and formalised its 2013 calendar. The focus will be on the convergence of the Business Travel and MICE sectors, with the ambition of developing a think tank dedicated to these issues.

As well as spending on individual business travel, spending on meetings and seminars should be rationalised. They are now under the control of purchasing departments, and represent a major source of savings for companies.

On 21 May, the Carlton Hotel will be hosting the Generous People event in Cannes: a charity gala organised by The Heart Fund, which fights heart disease in developing countries. The event is being organised in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival, and coincides with the centenary of the famous hotel.

There's the city of Cape Town, with its unique atmosphere that makes it hard to tell whether it's made in Europe, California or simply Africa. There's the atmosphere of the Cape of Good Hope, its windswept plateau and its nose pointing towards the South Pole. There's Johannesburg, a megalopolis in the throes of change, discovering post-modernity while sticking its tongue out at the old laws of apartheid... South Africa has it all. And there are also some extraordinary game reserves that are the talk of the town.

Anne Dumortier Aksoy is the incentive director of Kirkit Voyage.

André Laget is the Director of Akilanga DMC & Events.

The Ascott group of hotel residences, which owns the Citadines brand in particular, is expanding its offering in South-East Asia, with several openings expected in Vietnam.

La 21^th edition of the Bedouk/Coach Omnium barometer was presented on February 6 at the annual meeting of MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Convention, Exhibition and Event) professionals at Porte de Versailles.

Pursuing its objective of international digital development, the Monte-Carlo SBM Group is now equipped with a new website dedicated to MICE.