Philippe Nasr is an old hand at inward investment in Marseille. After launching a Marseille operation for logistics group DHL, he was headhunted by Egencia, the corporate travel arm of Expedia, when the US online reservations group began looking for a second French base in 2006.

Mr Nasr, now head of customer services for France and Belgium at Egencia, was such a convincing advocate of Marseille’s merits that Egencia not only hired him, but followed his advice to make it a strategic centre for customer relations.