Organising - planning a world expo in France: review of Dubai world expo 2020 and the French candidacy bid

Organizar - planificar una exposición universal en Francia: revisión de la exposición mundial de Dubái 2020 y la candidatura francesa

Patrice Ballester

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: While the Dubai World Expo, which ended in late March, was a manifest success, France's Paris 2025 bid failed. An initial economic, touristic, cultural, and urbanistic assessment of this Emirati mega-event allows for an analysis of the stakes and effective strategies, helping identify France's missteps and consider key directions for a successful future candidacy. On March 31, 2022, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the 35th World Expo under the authority of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) came to a close. The scale of its success is striking, especially considering that this mega-event ranks alongside the Olympic Games. Notably, Dubai's authorities postponed the Expo, originally scheduled for 2020–2021, to respond strategically to the Covid-19 crisis. Comparisons with the Tokyo 2020 Olympics are pertinent. The UAE aimed to emerge stronger from the pandemic, using the World Expo as a short-, medium-, and long-term economic and touristic catalyst. The analysis leads to three conclusions: the Dubai Expo 2020 was an economic success thanks to its full integration into the UAE's tourism and business ecosystem (based on a critical assessment of the latest economic and tourism data); tourism was leveraged to rebrand the UAE through post-event ecological urbanism and MICE-focused development ("City Expo") ahead of COP 21; and a supportive real estate strategy was deployed. From this, we propose an innovative analytical framework to guide French professionals: "Four Key Challenges – A Matrix for a Candidate City."

Keywords: world expo; Dubai; Paris; mega-event; tourism; economy; ecology; analysis matrix; communication; marketing; management; Exposición Universal; París; megaevento; turismo; economía; ecología; matriz de análisis; comunicación; gestión; méga-événement; tourisme; économie; écologie; matrice d’analyse; Exposition universelle; Esposizione Universale; Parigi; mega-evento; economia; ecologia; matrice di analisi; comunicazione; 万国博覧会; ドバイ; パリ; メガイベント; 観光; 経済; エコロジー; 分析マトリックス; コミュニケーション; マーケティング; マネジメント; 国際博覧会; 万博; ばんぱく; こくさいはくらんかい; 유니버설 전시회; 두바이; 파리; 메가 이벤트; 관광; 경제; 생태학; 분석 매트릭스; 커뮤니케이션; 마케팅; 관리; 세계박람회; Exposição Universal; matriz de análise; comunicação; gestão; 世界博覽會; 迪拜; 巴黎; 大型活動; 旅遊; 經濟; 生態; 分析矩陣; 傳播; 營銷; 管理; 万国博览会 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12-17
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03904805v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Espaces. Tourisme et loisirs, 2022, Très grande satisfaction client - Labels touristiques, n°369, p.2-20

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03904805v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03904805

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().