Incentives and meetings

At the wheel of a black Rolls Royce Phantom, Michel, impeccable in his dark suit and immaculate white shirt, is waiting for four clients on the forecourt of Bordeaux station for a VIP tour of the estates of his boss, the producer of grands crus Bernard Magrez.

At Univ'AirPlus on 28 August, the French association of travel managers presented its fourth White Paper, the first devoted to the MICE (Meeting, Incentive, Convention, Exhibition) sector. The aim of this document is to provide travel managers with an insight into a new field of action, and to help them better understand a heterogeneous market in order to optimise the synergies between business travel and meetings.

With the Olympic Games, the Queen's Jubilee and Dickens' 200th birthday, 2012 is the year of England... All the more reason to discover the bucolic beauty of Kent, less than an hour from London and two hours from Paris by Eurostar.

Strange good news: global warming is making English winegrowers happy.

Companies are getting into the swing of things. Golf, with its elitist image, lends itself to the organisation of sports seminars or inter-professional tournaments, providing an opportunity to meet new people and bring teams closer together. Top class.

Did you know? With over 35 million overnight stays, Charente-Maritime is now France's second most popular tourist region outside Paris. And there's plenty to see and do in an area that's making the most of its business tourism offer. Here's the story of a cultural and sporting incentive tour, once undertaken by a company in the electronics sector.

Agathe Brunel is the Sales and Marketing Manager at Dolce Chantilly.

Of course, there's Bangkok: huge, sprawling, hyper-urban, alive day and night, dominated by skyscrapers that overshadow the city's old quarters... But there's also, in the north of the country, the very cultural Chiang Mai, the country's handicraft capital.

There is a department in France where the volcano sometimes roars, where the peaks make you dizzy and where the water in the lagoon is close to 30 degrees. Fire and water have decided it this way: Reunion has plenty of relief. Here's the story of an intense incentive programme undertaken by a photovoltaic company.

Pascal Viroleau is the Director of Île de la Réunion Tourisme.

Alongside its contemporary architecture, Valencia reveals the vestiges of its Golden Age, when one of the most influential families of the 15th century watched over its splendour: the Borjas, a sulphurous lineage better known by its Italianised name of Borgia.

More than just a place to work, business centres support their customers as closely as possible to their needs. Like the hotel industry, they are developing innovative services to keep up with trends in a professional world that is tending towards nomadism.

Jean-Jérôme tricoire is the founding director of Tricoire Architectes.

Berlin is banking on a particularly buoyant 2012 for foreign customers, especially business travellers, who will soon be able to use the new Berlin Brandenburg airport.