Dubai: Now that the UAE has got the Expo home and celebrated with fireworks, it’s time to see how lessons from that bid that can be applied when bidding for other big events. “The key thing is that Expo 2020 is not just about Expo 2020,” says Martin Sirk, the CEO of International Congress & Convention Association’s (ICCA).

“Already the strategic thinking is there. We can actually draw a parallel to that process and the process by which you try and win a cardiology conference or an orthopaedic conference or a high-tech association conference. Those events are smaller scale but they are still widely important,” says Sirk.

Hala Ghandour, the Deputy Managing Director of the UAE’s successful Expo 2020 bid gave a talk on How Dubai won World Expo 2020 at a seminar co-hosted by the Dubai Convention Bureau and ICCA. Highlights of the presentation include insights on what really worked in Dubai’s favour.

Ghandour says that every little bit helped, including presenting a 650-page bid document to make a case for the emirate. The document detailed everything from the specifications of the site, to profile of expected visitors. While the city presented a strong case for why it was ideal to host the event, the fact that private and public sector were visibly supportive also worked in Dubai’s favour.

Voting nations

The impact of the long and consistent lobbying process, which began after a 10-member team visited the UAE in February 2012, cannot be underestimated. “Every six months we stood before all of the voting nations and gave a presentation on our capabilities,” says Ghandour.

The team put together for the bid visited multi-lateral conferences held in countries across the world to ensure that the message reached the right audience.

“We engaged with the delegates who actually press the buttons on the voting day — the 167 member states have between one and three delegates who have the right to vote. Most of them are based in Paris and many of them are the ambassadors of that nation. Over the 24-month period we got to know them very well, making sure that they knew us, they liked us and making sure that they understood the value proposition that we were bringing to the table, making sure that they believed that Dubai could hold the next expo better than our competitors,” she says, adding that this alone would not have been enough.

“On another level, we also had to focus on their capital — each of the delegates also reported to a national authority back in the capital, most of the time in their ministry of foreign affairs. So we spent a lot of time travelling from country to country, engaging with then on that level,” she says.

Sustainability

Understanding the rationale behind the final decision, everything Dubai did strengthened its case. The Connecting Minds, Creating the Future, which encompasses sustainability, opportunity and mobility was designed to be inclusive. “You want something broad because in the end countries are going to build pavilions based on corporate support. We needed to make sure that each of them had corporations in their country that would give them content and help sponsor and build,” Ghandour says.

The promise of Dubai has a hub also held true, especially now that access to emerging markets in the region is becoming crucial for most countries. Compared to the 73 million Chinese that attended the Expo 2010 held in Shanghai, Ghandour says, Expo 2020 promised a reach to newer markets. “I don’t just mean that Dubai is very diverse. I actually mean that 70 per cent of our visitors will be people flying into Dubai to order attend. It would open a new region for the participants, which means new investment. This is important for the participants who are coming here not only to showcase tourism and destination but also to foster trade and FDI.”