The Impact of EXPO 2020 Dubai on the Behavioral Intentions towards Egypt as a Tourist Destination

In spite of the long established effects of mega-events on leveraging destinations, there is a knowledge gap on how mega events, especially the World Expos, affect the participated countries rather than the host ones. One of the main gains predicted to be achieved from the Egyptian participation in Expo 2020 Dubai is promoting Egypt as one of the most important global tourist and archaeological destinations. The current study proposed a model to examine the event experience (EE) of the Egyptian pavilion’s visitors during Expo 2020 Dubai utilizing the event experience scale (EES) and how it affects the behavioral intentions (BI) toward the Egyptian Destination through the mediating role of the Customers’ satisfaction (CS) with event experience and transferred destination image (DI). Questionnaire was used as a research method and it targets the visitors of the Egyptian pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai. Data analysis of 393 valid forms was done using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that event experience has positive direct impact on tourist satisfaction and destination image, further, tourist satisfaction and destination image have direct impact on behavioral intention. Moreover, it was discovered that the association between event experience (visiting the Egyptian Pavilion) and behavioral intention (intention to visit Egypt and say positive word of mouth about it) is fully mediated by customer satisfaction with their experience after visiting the Egyptian pavilion and the Egyptian destination image transferred through Expo 2020 Dubai.