Switzerland Meeting Trophy Turns Fam Trips into Planning Intelligence
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The Switzerland Meeting Trophy showcased how Lausanne, Crans-Montana, Montreux-Riviera and Geneva combine efficient mobility, congress infrastructure, scientific expertise, alpine retreats, lakefront hospitality and cultural experiences for meetings, association events and incentives.
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28th Jul, 2026
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The Switzerland Meeting Trophy marked its 20th edition in 2026 by turning destination familiarisation into a live exercise for meeting planners. Created by Switzerland Tourism and the Switzerland Convention and Incentive Bureau (SCIB), the Trophy brings international MICE buyers into national teams for a competitive rally with Swiss partners.HQ followed Team Belgium through Lausanne, Crans-Montana, Montreux-Riviera and Geneva. Sustainability and Swiss mobility framed a route focused on four connected destinations around Lake Geneva and the canton of Valais, each with a distinct case for association events, meetings and incentives.
Author: Jesús Guerrero Chacón
Lausanne: Sport, Science and Cultural Event Spaces
Team Belgium reached Lausanne by train from Geneva Airport before the Trophy’s official kick-off in Crans-Montana. Lausanne Tourism hosted lunch at Brasserie de Montbenon, a group-friendly venue in a 1908 building overlooking Lake Geneva, before the onward transfer showed how rail access can fit into a multi-destination meetings programme.
Lausanne is the Olympic Capital, home to the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic Museum and several sports federations. Meetings on sport governance, ethics, health, law and social impact can use that setting, with venues and partners linking congress content to the city’s sports-policy role.
A few minutes from the railway station, Plateforme 10 brings culture into the same compact event geography. The art district brings together the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts, mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts), and Photo Elysée, dedicated to photography. Its indoor venues and outdoor spaces give meeting planners options for private events, receptions and cultural programming within the same visit.
Western Switzerland’s Health Valley adds a life sciences layer, stretching from Geneva towards Bern through biotech, medtech, pharma, digital health and research institutions. The corridor includes the University Hospital of Lausanne, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Biopôle life sciences campus and innovation sites with depth in oncology, neurosciences, immunology and medtech. Through the Space Cities Network, an international alliance using space-sector research, industry and education to attract related business events, the city connects EPFL, the SwissTech Convention Center and local space expertise with congresses in aeronautics, astronomy and space technology.
Crans-Montana: Alpine Retreats with Congress Infrastructure
From Sierre, the funicular climbed from the Rhône Valley, a glacier-fed alpine valley known for terraced vineyards, to Crans-Montana at around 1,500 metres. The official Trophy programme opened that evening with SCIB and Crans-Montana Tourism & Congress, before moving to Cry d’Er by gondola the next morning.
Crans-Montana’s meeting offer is strongest where nature, wellness and luxury hospitality shape the programme. Le Régent Congress Centre provides the main infrastructure, with modular rooms for conferences, seminars, exhibitions and gala formats. Crans Ambassador, Guarda Golf Hotel and Residences and Six Senses Crans-Montana add alpine stays for executive sessions, spa-led retreats and incentives.
Cry d’Er brought altitude into the rally through team challenges and lunch, before a self-drive stage to Montreux-Riviera with electric Europcar vehicles. Crans-Montana gives meeting planners a compact alpine base, with golf, wine, wellness, lakes, restaurants and outdoor activities close to hotels and congress facilities. The descent placed the resort within a wider Swiss programme, linking a mountain retreat with lakefront and urban destinations in the same day.
Montreux-Riviera: Music, Heritage and Congress Renewal
Montreux-Vevey Tourism introduced the Riviera through two readings of lakefront hospitality. Fairmont Le Montreux Palace brought participants into a Belle Époque setting, with Lake Geneva views, heritage salons and a long-standing role in conferences and incentives. Mona Montreux offered a contemporary waterfront stop, adding a newer hospitality reference to the destination’s meetings landscape.
The wider congress story centres on the 2m2c Montreux Music and Convention Centre, which reopened in summer 2026 for the 60th anniversary of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Its return brings a major convention asset back to the market, with flexible spaces, improved circulation and a closer link between congress use, music heritage and the town’s cultural calendar.
The five-star Fairmont has also completed its renovation. One of the Riviera’s best-known meetings addresses, it offers spaces for board-level meetings and larger functions, with lakefront receptions and offsite experiences close by. Within the same Lake Geneva corridor, Montreux gains relevance for life sciences retreats, health-sector leadership meetings and association events that need proximity to Western Switzerland’s medical and scientific expertise. The destination adds privacy, culture and hospitality for formats better suited to a quieter Riviera setting.
Geneva: Associations, Science and Diplomacy in One City
Geneva closed the Trophy with international organisations, scientific institutions, airport-linked venues and a diplomatic environment used to high-level meetings. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, gave the programme its strongest science component. Its Science Gateway, opened in October 2023, brings exhibitions, events and learning into one of Geneva’s major knowledge assets. The site has welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors and received a Special Commendation at the European Museum of the Year Awards in June 2026. Teams answered science questions across CERN exhibitions, while the Science Gateway auditorium and the Globe of Science and Innovation showed capacity for conferences, cocktails, dinners, guided tours, exhibitions and film screenings.
Domaine de Châteauvieux added gastronomy and winemaking heritage to the Geneva programme. Lunch took place at the one-Michelin-starred restaurant, housed in a 16th-century building in one of Switzerland’s leading wine-growing regions, with views over the Rhône. The city rally added local expertise through watchmaking at Initium, a chocolate workshop and tasting at La Bonbonnière, and cultural programming at the Museum of Art and History. The final night moved to Restaurant Hôtel du Parc des Eaux-Vives, where dinner, the party and the announcement of this year’s Trophy winner closed the programme in a heritage setting.
The final stage, developed with Geneva Tourism & Convention Bureau, showed the city’s central hotel base, with Hotel President Wilson, Hotel Royal, Hotel N’vY and Hotel Auteuil placing groups between the lake, station and event venues. Geneva’s wider congress infrastructure includes Palexpo, Switzerland’s second-largest exhibition and convention centre, close to Geneva International Airport and Geneva Airport railway station, as well as the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG), university spaces and the United Nations Quarter for scientific, medical, legal, humanitarian and policy-led events.
Across 20 editions, the Trophy has refined a familiarisation model with clear professional value. In 2026, Lausanne, Crans-Montana, Montreux-Riviera and Geneva offered four planning cases within one connected programme, using Swiss mobility, Swisstainable and partner coordination to help buyers assess each destination in practice.
More information on: meetings.myswitzerland.com
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