Editorial

Citation

(2014), "Editorial", Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 6 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/WHATT-03-2014-0019

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Volume 6, Issue 4

Dubai’s economic growth in recent years is closely aligned with tourism development and following a successful bid to host Expo 2020; its hospitality and tourism industry faces a new set of opportunities and challenges. Specifically, what does the Industry need to do to prepare for this significant event? Sanjay Nadkarni and Stuart Jauncey and their team of industry practitioners and hospitality education professionals draw on local experience and expertise to provide a detailed response. This issue is not only a “must read” for stakeholders in Dubai but for all cities preparing to host a mega event. I should like to thank Sanjay, Stuart and their team for a timely analysis and the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management in Dubai for embracing the opportunity to support its local industry in this way.

Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) aims to make a practical and theoretical contribution to the hospitality and tourism development, and we seek to do this by using a key question to focus attention on an industry issue. If you would like to contribute to our work by serving as a WHATT theme editor, please do contact me.

Richard Teare
Managing Editor, WHATT

Expo 2020: How is Dubai’s hospitality and tourism industry preparing?

That Dubai has witnessed phenomenal socio-economic growth in recent years is well documented in academic and popular literature. Hicupps such as the 2008 financial crisis notwithstanding, the growth curve continues its upward trajectory. For a city-state with relatively scant natural resources (in comparsion with its oil-rich peers in the region) to have achieved this “economic miracle” primarily driven by services and tourism is a testimony to the pragmatic and visionary policies of the Government. Iconic brands such as Emirates Airlines and Jumeirah luxury hotels are a case in point. The Government’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing has drawn up an ambitious “Tourism Vision for 2020” plan which aims to attract 20 million tourists in the year that the Expo 2020 will be hosted in Dubai. Thus, Dubai, having won the rights to host the Expo 2020 against spirited bids by competing potential host cities Ekaterinburg, Izmir and Sao Paulo, should come as no surprise.

Dubai’s bid document: “Connecting Minds, Creating the Future” envisages that the Expo 2020 event will pioneer new partnerships for sustainable growth on the back of seamless connectivity, state-of-the art logistics and world-class infrastructure. Dubai’s track record in scalable development of the troika-connectivity, logistics and infrastructure has indeed been enviable and thus augments the credibility of the bid. However, the scale of growth leading up to the Expo 2020 event with some 70 per cent of visitors from overseas, throws in its wake a set of distinctive challenges as well as opportunities for the tourism and hospitality industry.

To begin, the theme issue explores the extent to which visa requirements serve as an entry barrier and might prove an impediment to Dubai in achieving its Tourism Vision 2020 targets. Dubai already has an efficient electronic visa system for nationals of countries requiring an entry visa to the United Arab Emirates and has been gradually extending the list of countries whose nationals are eligible for visa-free access, the most recent example being inclusion of 13 new European Union member states. In the opening article, Marina Rizzi addresses this question by assessing the impact of travel visa requirements on leisure travellers’ perceptions and choice of destination and discusses the implications for Dubai.

The Middle East region is not known to have an egalitarian legacy when it comes to provision of tourism infrastructure for the physically challenged. This raises some important questions in the run up to Expo 2020: What are the current legal safeguards in this jurisdiction, and are these adequate in ensuring that travellers with physical disabilities do not feel discriminated against? In the second article, Stephanie Morris and Scolah Kazi delve into this vexing topic by studying the current state of affairs and emerging trends pertaining to accessible accommodation, particularly in Dubai’s luxury hotel segment.

In today’s interconnected global village, digital technologies form the backbone of connectivity, logistics and infrastructure – the three pillars of Dubai’s Expo 2020 bid. Acutely conscious of this fact, in March 2014, the Dubai Government launched its “Smart City” project which aims at providing a Wifi footprint in the city’s public areas to enable gratis Internet access for visitors and residents alike. Against such an enabling backdrop, will small and micro tourism enterprises (SMTEs) who are key stakeholders in Dubai’s success story be able to leverage a “digital dividend”? In the third article, Florian Kriechbaumer and Natasa Christodouildou critically examine concepts and theories in this domain and thereafter draw lessons and provide recommendations for Dubai’s SMTEs to optimize their digital channel mix by focussing on big data and SoLoMo (social, local, mobile).

To cater to the targeted visitor numbers for Expo 2020 and in line with the Tourism Vision 2020 targets, Dubai’s hotel inventory is expected to push the 100,000 room mark in little more than half-a-decade of development. Ability to deliver a pleasant guest experience will be contingent upon the support infrastructure being able to cope with this massive capacity expansion. The fourth article, by Angela Anthonisz, identifies housekeeping trends and challenges peculiar to this region and studies the scope for innovative solutions and barriers to their adoption. That innovation is even possible in otherwise staid housekeeping functions dominated by standard operating procedures is in itself an interesting aspect.

Sustainable growth has been a key value proposition of Dubai’s Expo 2020 bid. This raises some more questions: How effective are Dubai’s hospitality stakeholders in communicating their sustainable practices and policies to enhance the perceptions of their green credentials? Further, do ownership structure and brand affiliation play a role in this regard? These are questions that Nina Jenkins and Ioanna Karanikola explore in the fifth article. By examining the current state of affairs on the subject, the authors are able to provide recommendations for industry stakeholders in the run up to Expo 2020.

The concluding article highlights the key methodological elements in developing the research agenda for this theme issue and summarizes by drawing on the discussion and inferences arrived at in the preceding papers so as to identify the key success factors associated with hosting Expo 2020 in Dubai.

Sanjay Nadkarni and Stuart Jauncey
Theme Editors

About the Theme Editors

Dr Sanjay Nadkarni is currently Director of Research and Associate Professor at the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, Dubai. He is also Visiting Professor at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, Switzerland, and the City University of Macau, Macau. Sanjay’s research and pedagogic interests in hospitality and tourism are in the domains of digital strategy, quantitative methods, economic development and sustainability studies. In addition to more than 16 years of experience in tourism and hospitality education and research, Sanjay has actively engaged in consultancy and advisory assignments for multilateral institutions, including the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, United Nations Development Programme and United Nations World Trade Organization as well as for the hospitality and tourism industry stakeholders in Macau and Dubai.

A native of Mumbai, India, Sanjay was Assistant Professor and Programme Coordinator at the Faculty of International Tourism, Macau University of Science & Technology, Macau, prior to relocating to Dubai in 2009. He studied for his BSc and MSc degrees at the MV Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, and obtained a PhD degree from the University of Hull, UK. Sanjay also gained research experience as Research Associate at the TIM School, University of Hawaii at Manoa and the University of Central Asia. Sanjay is passionate about tourism’s role in economic development and sustainability and is an open source evangelist.

Dr Stuart Jauncey, Dean of the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, is a hospitality professional with many years of experience in the field. He studied Culinary Arts and then took a BSc (Honours) degree in Hospitality Management at Oxford Polytechnic. He studied for an MSc degree in International Hotel Management at the University of Surrey. He returned to his old college (now Oxford Brookes University) as Lecturer and completed a post graduate diploma in third level teaching and earned a PhD degree – which focused on all aspects of the role of the hotel General Manager. Stuart later became Undergraduate Programmes Director at Oxford Brookes, and in 1998, he established the Centre for Environmental Studies in the Hospitality Industry, which is now recognized as a centre of excellence for industry-focused environmental research. From 2001 to 2007, Jauncey was Head of the School of Hotel and Catering Studies at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) in Ireland, where he was responsible for three departments serving 1,200 students and 22 programmes – from certificate to the post-graduate level. One of his legacies to GMIT is the West of Ireland Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research, which he founded in 2002. He is also proud to have established several new degrees and academic progression routes for all students, enabling those who study basic cookery, or other operational programmes, to progress to degree and post graduate qualifications. In addition to academic management, Stuart has supervised more than 30 post graduate students and served as external examiner for hospitality and business degrees across Europe.