Dubai Expo 2020 | Are We Ready for a Fully Virtual Experience?

The long-awaited Dubai Expo 2020 is finally opening its gates on 1^st October 2021 to visitors from across the world, with tickets up for sale from July. The news is generating lots of buzz about the technological innovations planned for showcase at the Expo. The event venue is an expanse of 4.4 sq kms with its own logistical systems and highway exits, projecting the power of UAE as the land of opportunities.

Expo 2020 is divided into three main themes – Mobility, Opportunity and Sustainability, hosted across three pavilions. Each country has bid for pavilion space and a sub-theme they want to present to the world; of this space, nearly 90,000 sq ft have been earmarked for 9 leading technologies including Virtual Reality, AI, Medicine and Robotics. The 6-month event is the first of its kind that has not been cancelled, only rescheduled.

Dubai Expo 2020 Postponed | What Now?

Dubai Expo 2020 was originally scheduled to start in October of 2020. It became the first BIE (Bureau International des Expositions) expo in the pandemic to be postponed instead of cancelled, owing to its immense economic significance to the gulf nation. Last year, the UAE government anticipated a total of 25 million tourists, over a period of 6 months; the estimate hasn’t changed despite the rescheduling.

As a result, UAE government has spent more than $30 billion on the construction of the venue, which takes up twice as much land as the city of Monaco. This is a significant addition to the Dubai’s debt, which is already burdened significantly and predicted to get worse. Beyond the civic financial implications, Dubai Expo is also a massive transit undertaking – and no amount of sustainable interventions can fully subvert the global environmental impact.  

Add to this the atmosphere of uncertainty created by the third wave of Covid-19, and the pay-off to the planning begins to look bleak. This raises the question – is there any way we can reduce the risk without sacrificing the rewards?

VR Expo | A Truly Global Phenomenon

Expos were created with the agenda of showcasing the best of diverse cultures, for mutual profit. They represent, in essence, a conglomeration of the world. Dubai Expo is no different, and its enthusiastic stance on highlighting technology reflects this spirit. The strategic use of VR tools can take this agenda a step further by making many events of the expo completely virtual.

Instead of just being a part of the showcase, as it is presently, VR can help transform Dubai Expo 2020 into a globally accessible phenomenon. Not only will this reduce the load on the local resources and infrastructure, it will also pull in people who cannot – or have chosen not to – visit this year’s event.

Virtual events are on the rise across the world, with great success. However, most of these events have been organized using teleconferencing applications – which meet the requirement of information exchange, but do not allow for true immersion. A large part of the pull of Dubai Expo is this immersion; while replicating it entirely in a virtual environment would be a mammoth task, many aspects – keynotes, product demos, themed displays and launches – can be organized in VR.

At NextMeet, we’ve been developing on this premise to create a virtual ecosystem that supports fully remote meetings and conferences. Using spatial audio, environment branding & customization options, and avatar-based in-platform navigation, we are translating the physical meeting environment for virtual gatherings. Adopting similar tools, Dubai Expo can not only boost attendee numbers to an unprecedented high, it can also position itself as a global pioneer of trade events.

It is unlikely that UAE will choose to go the VR Expo route this late in the game, especially given their optimism that the event will revitalize its hospitality and tourism sectors. However, given their history of progressive stances, a fully virtual Dubai Expo may only be a few years away.