PARIS — The official visit of Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman to France, leading a huge contingent of ministers and high ranking officials, provides Saudi Arabia with an exceptional opportunity to muster decisive support for Riyadh's candidacy to host the World Expo 2030. The event would give an unprecedented global experience for participants and millions of visitors, as it is expected to draw 40 million visitors in addition to recording a billion virtual visits. Saudi Arabia is upbeat about winning competition from Rome, Odessa and Busan in hosting Expo 2030 at its capital city of Riyadh. The Kingdom is making finishing touches to its elaborate and foolproof preparations to hold an official reception for 178 countries Paris on Monday. The landmark event will be crucial in the Kingdom's vibrant bid to host the Expo 2030 in the city of Riyadh. The reception will be followed by the General Assembly of the International Bureau of Exhibitions (The Bureau International des Expositions -BIE), which will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday at its headquarters in the French capital. The General Assembly would listen to the detailed candidature dossier submitted by four competing countries to BIE. Voting will take place next November to choose the host city for this global event. In addition to Saudi Arabia, which offered its strong bid in favor the capital city of Riyadh, Italy, South Korea and Ukraine are in the fray with their bid to host the Expo in their cities of Rome, Busan and Odesa respectively. The project examination phase for World Expo 2030 is currently underway. The host country of World Expo 2030 will then be elected by BIE member states, gathered in a General Assembly set to take place in November this year on the principle of one country, one vote. During the past months, delegations from the BIE visited all these four countries to learn about their goals, aspirations and capabilities to organize the Expo, which requires huge financial investments and infrastructure capable of withstanding the pressures posed by the arrival of millions of visitors to the event, which is being held once in every five years. The delegations also consider the auxiliary tourism and cultural activities that represent an additional value to the exhibition and are sometimes acts as a major factor that favors one nomination over another. In general, World Expo constitutes a scientific, cultural and tourist attraction factor in the first place, as it hosts several dozen pavilions that provide an interface for the exhibiting countries thanks to the large spaces they occupy. Until today, China stood in terms of the largest area set aside for organizing the event with 20,000 square meters. World Expos through ages The first World Expo was held in London in 1850 and later it was hosted by Paris in 1855. The World Expos remained confined to London and Paris until 1878, after which the exhibition moved to the United States of America where Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosted it for the first time. Most of the international exhibitions were hosted by Europe while Africa and Latin America have so far not received an opportunity to host any of the exhibitions. In the Arab world, Dubai was the only city that had the opportunity to organize the Expo, whose opening was postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2000, three European cities had the opportunity to host World Expo, the first of which was Hanover, Germany in 2000, and it was followed by Zaragoza, Spain in 2008, and Milan, Italy in 2015. As for the remaining two exhibitions, they moved between the Japanese city of Aichi in the year 2005 and the South Korean city of Yeosu in 2012. "This matter could play in favor of the Kingdom's candidacy, and could be a major argument and motive for choosing Riyadh, given that exhibitions are called international because they mean all countries," according to one of the experts of an international organization. "It is not fair to deprive it of a major capital like Riyadh, by giving it a second time to Italy or South Korea, in a very short time difference," the expert observed. It should be noted that the next exhibition, which will take place in 2025, will be hosted by Japan in Osaka City. Why Riyadh should be venue of World Expo 2030? It goes without saying that World Expos produce huge returns in the political, social, tourist, economic, cultural and urban realms. On the one hand, it transforms the host country into a global destination. On the other hand, it contributes to the modernization and completion of the infrastructure, and the creation of new structures in order to provide all the requirements with regard to housing, transportation and comfort for the visitors. In the case of Saudi Arabia, it embarked on a train of tremendous opening up, and its passion is exposed to unveil the invaluable treasures and historical heritage sites that it hosts. All these give it a major leverage to host the World Expo in a way further accelerating the forward march. Moreover, there is a highly symbolic element in terms of the fact that the timing of the World Expo coincides with the realization of the Kingdom's ambitious Vision 2030, so that the exhibition serves as an international witness to the exceptional transformation that has been achieved within a couple of years. BIE delegation's visit to Riyadh Last March, a delegation from BIE paid a five-day official visit to Riyadh to discuss the World Expo 2030 dossier with high ranking Saudi officials. The major highlight of the visit was the exceptional gesture and determination of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with regard to hosting the global event. The Crown Prince is the chairman of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City (RCRC), which is the body responsible for the development of the capital city, including the bid to host the World Expo 2030. During the visit, the BIE delegation expressed its appreciation of the Crown Prince's gesture. There is no doubt that the presence of the Crown Prince in the French capital and his participation on Monday's grand celebration as a prelude to the BIE General Assembly, in addition to the contacts that have been made with around 50 heads of state and government who are expected to attend the global financial summit in Paris, will be instrumental in playing an influential role in boosting Riyadh's bid to host the World Expo. It should be noted that Monday's meeting will listen to the proposals of the concerned countries, while voting to choose the winning city will take place next fall. France preempted the deadline by officially announcing its support for the candidacy of Saudi Arabia, despite the Italian and Ukrainian nominations. French sources confirmed that Saudi Arabia has the greatest chance of winning Expo 2030, noting that the winning city must obtain a simple majority of the votes of the 170 member states. After the extensive meetings and dialogue sessions with the BIE delegation, CEO of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City Fahd Al-Rasheed, said that the file of Riyadh "is strong, and we are ready to host Expo 2030, as we have fulfilled all technical requirements. "We have unprecedented international support to host Riyadh Expo 2030, and this was the result of direct support and follow-up by the wise leadership and joint work among all government agencies, in addition to the support of the Saudi society," Al-Shareef said while adding, "we will present, by God's grace, an exceptional version at Riyadh Expo 2030, where we expect it to receive more than 40 million visits, in addition to a billion visits via the virtual platform (Metaverse), which has not happened before in the history of World Expos. We are pleased to reaffirm the readiness of the Kingdom and the enthusiasm of its citizens and residents to host this global event."
