Having begun last February with the innov-HUB launch, Geolink Expansion is keeping up momentum and renaming the group’s platforms one by one, in order to connect both national and international investors and entrepreneurs with French regions. This is an operation that is part of the expansion of a strategy codesigned over the years with Geolink’s partners, and shared here by Gwénaël Le Guennec, CEO and Founder of the company.

Last week, the platform parcsdactivites.com took on the name immo-HUB.org. Why was this change made?

Today, 80% of exogenous implantation project promoters are looking for already existing real estate solutions. To meet investors’ and entrepreneurs’ requirements, regions have therefore needed to develop their offers. When we launched Geolink Expansion 10 years ago, regional authorities were mainly wanting us to help them market business parks, while entrepreneurs nowadays are looking for premises that unite business with living quality… a fact that regional authorities have very much taken on, in putting forward more and more properties beyond business parks. Even the development of third places and micro-factories within towns has become part of this tendency, affirming the desire of many authorities to not only meet investors’ needs, but also to rethink the link between locals and the professional industry. In renaming parcsdactivites.com to immo-HUB.org, we wanted to give ourselves a name that reflects this progression, and that encompasses a much wider semantic field than thus far. 

Gwénaël Le Guennec, CEO and Founder of Geolink Expansion

This name change is part of Geolink Expansion’s development since the beginning of the year…

This development reflects a global strategy aimed at bringing larger legibility and visibility to all the opportunities and initiatives put forward by economic and regional developers, to optimise value and create jobs. While of course we want to respond to regional issues at any given point in time, we above all want to build a model that will enable us to anticipate, at least for the next 5 years, project leaders’ new expectations on the one hand, and the plurality of offers to be built in regions on the other. A reflexion that led us to launch innov-HUB last February, our new platform designed to connect innovative entrepreneurs with their ideal regions. In line with the market trends mentioned above, the site’s objective was to promote innovative ecosystems, specialised venues- incubators, accelerators, fablabs…, and in a general sense, all the initiatives (competition, project appeals…) aimed at supporting start-ups in their development project. At the same time, we wanted to give more visibility to the 2,500 or so innovation locations in France, for the benefit of the 50,000 or so innovation players identified throughout Europe!

The ‘HUB’s- the first step of a more global process around a common denominator?

Exactly. In April, it was tourism-HUB that replaced projet-tourisme, and recently, we regrouped all of our international sites under the same banner- invest-HUB. An indicative name that makes sense and speaks to economic decision-makers, while bringing together all of our partners outside France- economic agencies, cities, clusters… an international dimension that also prevailed at the time of renaming tourism-HUB. Did you know, for example, that among our last 500 investment files in the tourism sector, nearly a quarter are carried by foreign capital investors?

The development of regional visibility, the strengthening of international dimension… Geolink Expansion seems to be entering a new stage in its development?

The development of the HUB platforms is going to multiply our firepower for the greater benefit of France’s regions, who will see increased visibility and thus be able to better put on the map available ecosystems, sites to be taken over, infrastructure, their property offers… With these new platforms, we will also be able to strengthen Geolink Expansion’s unique role as a data aggregator/centraliser in commercial real estate, innovation, tourism, and international investment fields. Data analysis and interpretation is, in this respect, a key point. From the hubs, valuable information can be used to pick up on signals, in order to play an even more important role of detecting investment and industrial relocation projects and in building tomorrow’s offer within regions. Our new platforms will also enable us to increase the efficiency of the referencing and data-tracking systems set up by our specialists to boost offers in their respective sectors. With these new HUB tools, we aim to connect more and more entrepreneurs simply with the best ecosystems, to have positive and lasting regional impact.