Her Excellency Reem Al Hashimy, Minister for International Cooperation and Director General of Expo 2020 Dubai, this morning welcomed the delegation from San Marino visiting the United Arab Emirates, led by Secretary of State for Tourism, Federico Pedini Amati, together with the Commissioner for Expo 2020 and Ambassador of San Marino to the Emirates, Mauro Maiani, who conducted an initial survey of the expo site and of the San Marino pavilion. The UAE Minister stressed her willingness to continue to support San Marino at the Expo, and to evaluate specific requests for assistance relating to various aspects of San Marino’s participation, as well as her openness to staging bilateral meetings and, in the process, incentivizing the acquisition of knowledge of San Marino in the Emirates and encouraging investment by UAE entrepreneurs in San Marino and vice versa.

The San Marino Pavilion is centrally located, in the heart of the Expo site; the structure of the building is complete, as is the “wrapping” of the external facades, whereas the interior fit-out for the exhibition areas and the offices is nearing completion. As the first major post-pandemic international event, Expo 2020 will open its doors to the public October 1, 2021. The organizers are in optimistic mood: thanks to the increased capacity to deal with Covid and to the vaccinations – it emerged yesterday that all of the representatives of the participating countries can receive the vaccine here in Dubai – they stated that they expect visitor numbers to come close to the figure of 25 million forecast prior to the pandemic. For Secretary Pedini Amati, there was also an informal meeting with the Dubai Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, to discuss the upcoming participation of San Marino at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM), one of the largest international tourism-industry expos, which benefits from the presence of all the Arabian countries in the Gulf and the MENASA region.