TCEB promotes World Expo 2020 bid

News this week: Last week, the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) launched its ‘World Expo 2020: Believe in Thailand’ program, a campaign that aims to raise awareness and support for the country’s World Expo bid. The program includes promotional events that are currently taking place in Bangkok through until early next month. TCEB expects 200,000 people to join the campaign directly and expects the message of the campaign to reach over 3 million people across Thailand.

Thailand is currently bidding against Turkey, and Russia, which is expected to officially announce its bid by 2^nd November. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), which supervises the World Expo, is scheduled to release the results of the winning bid in June 2013. If Thailand wins the bid, TCEB is set to spend US$1 billion on developing Ayutthaya’s Bangsai district in order to host the World Expo. To date, TCEB has invested US$1.7 million on marketing and publicity campaigns.

Mr. Akapol Sorasuchart, President of TCEB, said “following the official submission of the bid for World Expo 2020 Ayutthaya, TCEB is preparing to raise public awareness and understanding nationwide and also to unite all Thai people as the hosts of the event in Ayutthaya, which will carry the theme ‘Redefine Globalization: Balanced Life, Sustainable Living’.”

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.

Thailand names Ayuthaya for its World Expo bid

News this week: Thailand has named Ayuthaya as the host city for its 2020 World Expo bid. The former capital city of the Kingdom won the bidding rights over other candidate cities including Chon Buri, Chanthaburi, Phetchaburi, Chiang Mai and Phuket. Under the theme of “Balanced Life, Sustainable Living”, Ayutthaya will receive an estimated US$10 million for its promotional campaign from the Thai government.

The Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau (TCEB) forecasts that potential visitor numbers would reach 37 million and the country to generate US$2 billion in revenue from tickets and sponsorship if the country succeeds in hosting the 2020 World Expo. The Thai government will submit the bid to the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) within six months and Thailand will need at least 80 votes out of the total 157 in order to win the hosting rights. The winner will be announced in 2014. The next edition of the World Expo will be held in Milan in 2015.

News this week: Shanghai World Expo records 73 million visitors

Shanghai, 31^st October: The Shanghai World Expo, which closed on 31^st October, officially recorded more than 73 million visitors in the duration of 184-day event. A total of 246 countries and international organisations took part in the event – setting a new record for the World Expo visitors. The next World Expo will be held in Milan, Italy, in 2015.

Shanghai Expo and social media

There's a very interesting piece on Marketing's daily e-newsletter from Hong Kong.Titled, Shanghai Expo spurs social media buzz, it's a piece by writer Adaline Lau's on Ogilvy's Thomas Crampton's thoughts about social media and the Shanghai World Expo (follow him on Twitter @thomascrampton). It's fascinating to see how the organisers of what will undoubtedly be the world's biggest event of this type in our life times have latched onto virtual experience and social networking as ways to extend its reach. They're now expecting up to 100 million people to attend in person but I noticed just this week on Monday when CCPIT Vice Chairman Wang Jinzhen spoke to the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, that he finished his presentation by talking about the virtual version of the Expo. It will, he said, be very necessary as it could take up to a month for a physical visitor to actually get around all 3.8 square km of exhibit space.

I'll be heading to the Expo in September but, in the meantime, will be moderating a panel discussion on social media and the events industry at the UFI CEO Forum this week in Geneva (springlike and sunny yesterday as you can see from the picture from my room at the Intercontinental). Follow us on Twitter with the #uficeoforum hashtag or by keeping an eye on my tweets at @pwoodwardhk or on the @ufilive page. See you online!

Virtual World Expo

An interesting post here at Ogilvy's Asia Digital Map blog which feeds my current fascination with the evolution of virtual events and social media: Asia Digital Map » Blog Archive » Take a virtual tour of World Expo 2010 Shanghai

There is a real buzz beginning to build about the World Expo which is very interesting: the tired old cynics in other parts of the world who dismiss these things as something old-fashioned and not for the digital native generation may be in for something of a surprise. The numbers are staggering and the organisers seem well on the way to hitting their targests: they're already 30% over their ambitious sponsorship targets which is pretty impressive in this tough crisis year.

500 days to Shanghai World EXPO

More on the Shanghai World Expo in this piece from CCTV via YouTube. Following our piece on the missing US presence, you can get a sense of the scale of what the Chinese are building in Shanghai.

No show US in Shanghai?

The Shanghaiist blog is a good place to keep up-to-date with what's happening up there on the east China coast. There's not usually too much, though, directly related to our business interests. Today, however, there's a very interesting post about the likely absence of the United States from the 2010 World Expo.

It links to a site dedicated to launching a US pavilion. The basic line is:

Beginning on May 1, 2010, and continuing for six months, the nations of the world will gather in Shanghai to participate in what is forecast to be the largest, most heavily attended Worlds Fair in history. Incredibly, without immediate and decisive action on the part of America’s leaders in commerce and in government, the United States of America will be glaringly absent from this global celebration.

The result would be an insult to the Chinese government, global humiliation for the American people, and a serious blow to U.S. commercial prospects in the vast Chinese and other regional markets. The repercussions could reverberate for decades. We don’t want this to happen!

According to the Shanghaiist, this is due a diplomatic snit in the early 1990s when Congress passed legislation forbidding government funding of world fair pavilions. It says the US subsequently withdrew from the Bureau Internationale d'Expositions. Who knew?