'With dynamic population, Dubai ideal spot for events'

Manal Al Bayat, Vice President of Engagement for Expo 2020 Dubai during the panel discussion Engagement and Entertainment in the New Media Age during the Hostcities Embracing Future Events conference at Fairmont The Palm, Dubai on Wednesday 18, November 2015. Photo by Juidin Bernarrd

Cities of the world got a glimpse into the future of hosting major events and the way technology will change audience engagement, on Wednesday, on the first day of the Host Cities Embracing Future Events summit in Dubai.
The event - now in its fourth edition - brings together experts from around the world to discuss how major events will be held in the future, as well as strategies for bids, sponsorship and engaging the public.
Local participants at the event include high-level representatives of Expo 2020, the Dubai Sports Council, Dubai Design Week, the Dubai Opera, Dubai Design Week, and the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.
In the opening remarks of the event, Giselle Pettyfer, CEO of Falcon and Associates, a strategic advisory firm which works on behalf of Dubai's leadership, said the emirate was a logical place to host such a summit.
"Needless to say, Dubai is doing a lot of hosting," she noted. "Hosting is something that Dubai does naturally. Over 200 nationalities now call the city home, more than 10 million tourists visit every year, and there's an ambitious plan to bring some 20 million tourists here by 2020. With its strategic location between East and West, and its young, dynamic population, there are huge opportunities in event hosting and attendance," she added.
The importance of events to Dubai was highlighted by a Deloitte Sports Business group report released at the summit, which found that sporting events - such as this weekend's DP World Tour Championship - have a total yearly economic impact of $1.7 billion, of which $670 originates abroad.
Among the major themes of Host Cities 2015 is the way in which technology and social media platforms are changing the way in which an event promotes itself and interacts with its local and international audiences.
"At some point, we probably only had five, 10 mediums to use. Now we have thousands of mediums," said Boutros Boutros, divisional senior vice-president of corporate communications, Marketing and Brand for Emirates. "The whole world is open, it's becoming more challenging."
"It's harder to measure in terms of how much money you (should) spend," he added. "You could spend nothing and get a great result, or spend millions and get nothing."
"Long term for Facebook is five years. Technology changes so rapidly that it makes sense to plan well beyond that," he said. "If you think about what a mobile device was five years ago, it was a GPS system, it took photos and maybe took videos ... now, a couple of years later, you have all of that technology, but you've also got the ability to measure your body."
"The mobile device is not just a communications tool, it is becoming a tool for us to know ourselves, so it brings this perspective of how you reach people in a much more relevant way," he added.
Manal Al Bayat, vice-president of engagement of Dubai Expo 2020, noted that Dubai's approach in reaching out to audiences for the event also involves the years preceding and after the Expo itself.
"We've never looked at Expo as a six-month event. For us it's always been about the journey leading up to 2020, and what we can do in terms of engaging with the community and solving global challenges," she said. "Innovation is a huge focus for us."
"(We think) in terms of what we showcase in 2020, and the legacy that is left behind."
bernd@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE
• Dubai

Bernd Debusmann Jr.

bernd@khaleejtimes.com