Existing research in identifying changes in public sentiment for major events faces limitations in capturing the intricacies of temporal changes, especially with large-scale data and diverse ...linguistic nuances. This study addresses this problem, with a particular focus on the globally acclaimed Dubai Expo 2020. The methodology employed in this research introduces a groundbreaking approach by leveraging advanced data engineering techniques on a massive corpus of 118,025 Tweets obtained from diverse users across 60 languages, covering the period from April 2021 to March 2023. The study pioneers the application of artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and Large Language Models (LLMs) for sentiment analysis and topic modeling on Twitter discourse. Through the meticulous data engineering process, including language detection, dynamic translation, and sentiment analysis, the research identifies subtle yet statistically significant changes in public sentiment, as evidenced by ANOVA testing (p=0.018 in average positive sentiment, p=0.004 in average neutral sentiment, and p=0.005 in average negative sentiments). Additionally, the study innovatively extracts and analyzes support-related Tweets, revealing distinct phases in temporal domains (pre-Expo, Expo, Post-Expo1, and Post-Expo2) and yielding 11,116 support-related tweets. The application of NLP techniques further uncovers 19 topics from UAE-related Tweets, providing a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic landscape of public sentiment over a two-year period. This research contributes significantly to the field by offering a novel and comprehensive framework for analyzing public sentiment, particularly in the context of major events, and sheds light on its broader implications for event management and public perception analysis.
Events tourism has been growing rapidly and has become one of the most common ways of attracting tourists to developing destinations. Hosting mega-events has become a means to achieve rapid ...development in a destination. Host-city residents are the first to feel the impact of hosting such events and are considered as key stakeholders. Results from a survey distributed in Dubai revealed that residents supported the upcoming EXPO 2020 event, with little concern for the potential associated costs - a result contradicting a lot of literature. The results provide guidance for policy makers regarding host-city residents' perceptions on hosting events.
Purpose
This paper aims to outline Emaar Hospitality Group’s (EHG’s) role as the official hotel and hospitality partner for Dubai Expo 2020.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper draws on personal ...insights from an industry and trend perspective, aligned with the Expo 2020 Dubai theme, “Connecting minds, creating the future,” and its three sub-themes: mobility, sustainability and opportunity.
Findings
As an outcome, EHG’s commitment to Dubai Expo 2020 encompasses the provision of rooms and hospitality, meeting and events venues including outside catering, a hotel of the future innovation stand that reflects the company’s commitment to innovation in the Middle East, gender parity (female-male ratio) employment of women and youth, support to small- and medium-sized enterprise and global apprenticeships for six months during the Expo 2020 event an a commitment to sustainable economic growth.
Originality/value
This is an original, experience-based piece that focuses on an Expo 2020 operator’s viewpoint.
Different sustainable technologies were used in Expo 2020 Dubai to construct the different participating pavilions. Moreover, participating countries in the Expo have presented their state-of-the-art ...sustainable urban planning, transportation, and energy technologies. The purpose of using and presenting these technologies was to raise the visitors' environmental awareness. Thus, this study first presents a sample of sustainable technologies that were used or presented at the Expo. It then seeks to determine if using and presenting these technologies has fulfilled the Expo goal of raising its visitors' environmental awareness. It also tries to find out which environmental dimension was raised the most. For this purpose, a questionnaire was used to measure environmental awareness before and after visiting Expo 2020 Dubai. Statistically analyzing the responses of 1,108 frequent visitors shows that Expo 2020 Dubai achieved its goal of increasing visitors' environmental awareness, particularly the environmental attitude dimension. The findings also reveal that it is essential to have a point of interest devoted to environmental issues in similar events. This positive impact on the visitors should convince upcoming mega-event planners to follow Expo 2020 Dubai's steps. However, researchers need to develop strategies to raise the willingness to act dimension of environmental awareness.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to provide context to the evolution of tourist attractions in Dubai, retrospectively learn from the experiences of the Milan and Shanghai Expos and to highlight ...the tourist attractions of Dubai Expo 2020. In so doing, the paper also seeks to understand how attractions play a role in shaping the growth of the tourism and hospitality sectors in Dubai.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for this paper were gathered from primary and secondary sources. Informal discussions with officials of Expo 2020 generally and tourism stakeholders, in particular, who were willing to participate in this study, form the core of the primary data reflected in this paper. These discussions, which span a period of four weeks, were transcribed for later study and analysis.
Findings
First, the tourism industry, the bedrock of Dubai’s economy, has witnessed remarkable growth during the period 1990-2015 and beyond because of its rich tourism infrastructure comprising hotels, tourism activities and tourist attractions. Second, it is important that Dubai Expo draws on the experiences and expectations of prior events and can apply lessons learnt from the Milan and Shanghai Expo events. Third, that Dubai Expo 2020 can enable Dubai to build on its established image for excellent infrastructure, attractions, hotels, affordable amenities, easy accessibility and highly-developed air and road transport systems.
Research limitations/implications
Even if lessons learnt from the Milan and Shanghai Expo are taken into account, they may not account for unforeseen circumstances and sources of failure – though they provide a guide in relation to the conduct of a mega event.
Practical implications
Dubai Expo 2020 can enable Dubai to build on its established and broadening global appeal.
Social implications
Employment prospects will be enhanced by Expo 2020 that will project an image of Dubai as a world tourist destination to a far greater extent than it has done so to date. Social changes may also occur because of cultural exchanges during the Expo 2020 period.
Originality/value
The paper discusses how strategic planning for new attractions combined with the existing attractions will help spread awareness of Expo 2020. The observations made from this study can be used by other nations hosting similar events in similar geographical areas, to help prepare and draw on prior experience and lessons learnt.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to discuss the phases and kinds of marketing strategies being employed during the conduct of mega events such as expos. The study also aims to familiarize the ...reader with the detailed marketing strategies used by Dubai Expo 2020 and the marketing strategies adopted by tour operators in Dubai, alongside their most used digital channels of communication and marketing. Further, an attempt has been made to understand how the marketing methods for Expo 2020 can be integrated with the marketing of general travel products in Dubai.
Design/methodology/approach
Short, unstructured interviews with open-ended questions were conducted as part of the data-collection method over a period of two weeks. The interviewees are a core group of officials from the marketing and IT sections of Dubai Expo 2020. The data were recorded for later retrieval and analysis. Also, a survey of 150 tour operators and travel agents was conducted over a period of five weeks. This garnered a comprehensive set of data on the preferred marketing strategies to promote tourism products.
Findings
The marketing strategies used for Dubai Expo 2020 have been attractive, varied and innovative. Digital marketing is the most opted-for channel of communication for marketing purposes by both Expo 2020 officials and tour operators and travel agents in Dubai. Maximum popularity in terms of usage by tour operators and travel agents is reflected in social media channels of marketing, especially Facebook. There is a need to evolve a distinctly separate digital marketing strategy that will create more tailored marketing campaigns based on the characteristics affecting the consumer behavior of people engaged in Expo 2020.
Research limitations/implications
This study could have incorporated more varied data if other stakeholders, e.g. hoteliers, had been included. More varied data would certainly have been useful in arriving at well-founded observations about the ideal marketing strategies that could be adopted for an event of this magnitude. Another limitation is that interviews with a greater cross-section of the officials of Dubai Expo 2020 would have rendered a more detailed and finer description of the marketing methods used in promoting Dubai Expo 2020.
Practical implications
Dubai is being equipped as a world-class venue for large-scale conferences and conventions rivaling Las Vegas for meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions. Further, Dubai will be able to position itself as a favored location for hosting a wide array of events with global participation.
Social implications
Based on this study, it is reasonable to conclude that there is a need to rethink and innovate ways of marketing by customizing the marketing strategies according to the market structure and consumer behavior, without abandoning any particular marketing channel.
Originality/value
This research on the marketing strategies of Dubai Expo 2020 is of interest to industry, government agencies and other stakeholders. The observations drawn from this study on marketing strategies can be used by other nations hosting similar events in similar geographical areas to provide a basis to design or redesign their tourism and marketing strategies.
Purpose
Dubai has been largely under-researched as a destination, particularly from a tourism perspective. Most current knowledge about the emirate tends to originate from broadcast media coverage, ...newspapers and business journals. Much of the recent academic research on the destination often positions Dubai in a broader development or management framework, resulting in what can be a narrow and largely western-oriented perspective that fails to highlight or identify many of the key issues underpinning its apparent success.
Design/methodology/approach
This research adopts an ethnographic approach based on the authors’ experiences in the destination and sets out to address this issue not only by presenting new information but also by analysing and explaining Dubai’s tourism development approach.
Findings
Some 40 years ago, Dubai was little more than a backwater tribal settlement, dependent on pearl fishing, trade and limited oil reserves. In 2018, it is now viewed as a futuristic city-state, rapidly expanding its global outreach and undertaking a range of high-profile development projects and acquisitions. The award of Expo 2020 has boosted government confidence in the sector with the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing planning to increase visitor numbers to 25 million by 2020 with an anticipated tripling of the associated economic benefit. However, despite its remarkable success, Dubai has been criticised for flying in the face of global sustainability trends and needs to think seriously about how it will manage the growth of its tourism industry.
Originality/value
Dubai has evolved to become one of the world’s leading tourism destinations, and it has done so despite our academic notions of sustainability, tourism planning, tourism resource requirements and demands for authenticity. This provides an opportunity for the authors to use Dubai as a vehicle through which to challenge these concepts and to move the established notions of “traditional” tourism thinking forward to acknowledge the value of alternative approaches to the creation of a tourism strategy.
The city of Dubai emerges as a leading partner in not only technology innovation but also designed infrastructure and strategic security. There is a strategy, which will globally add the city and ...leadership to the leading smart cities of the world. Considering current and future challenges, the strategic aim is to "smart" wire the city of Dubai by 2020. Dubai is a city of strategic technology, innovation and management. It is a global, vibrant and emerging economy among others, that can become an economic hub of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. The aim of this paper is to explore, analyze, and discuss elements of strategic management, innovation, development. It is also the aim to discuss elements of strategic security, in making the city is cyber-secure in a smart networked infrastructural and service provider, environment.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue “Expo 2020: What will be the impact on Dubai?” with reference to the experiences of ...the theme editor and writing team.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.
Findings
This paper provides a framework to facilitate discussion between academics and practitioners engaged with Dubai’s Expo 2020, identifies ways of improving competitiveness as an events destination and contributes to thinking about sustainable development before and after the event. The outcomes of a broad-ranging collaboration yield fresh insights, a deeper understanding of the issues and an array of possible responses to the theme issue question.
Practical implications
The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore and they reinforce the value of WHATT’s approach to collaborative working and writing.
Originality/value
The collaborative work reported in this theme issue offers a unified but contrarian response to the theme’s strategic question. Taken together, the collection of articles provides a detailed picture of the on-going preparation for Expo 2020 and plans to ensure continued growth in the post-Expo phase.
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