Predictive text

By A.B.

WITH 2014 heaving into sight, this is a fine time for the arrival of a set of predictions about the distant future of business travel. Indeed, “Business Travel 2060”, a report (download here) from AirPlus, a payments company, is manna from 36,000 feet.

The report is a rather strange mix of standard futurology and more fanciful projection. So its business-travel timeline predicts, reasonably enough, that high-speed rail services will expand in many countries by 2025 and that green energy will provide 30% of energy consumption by 2050. But it also suggests, with impressive accuracy, that flooding will force the abandonment of Bangkok by 2031.

In similar vein, the 20 main predictions for what can be expected in 2060 range from the frightening—“International law and order will disintegrate and pandemics will become more frequent, increasing the risk to travellers”—to the frighteningly mundane—“Travel and meetings will be single-cost items on company balance sheets”.

The report's dual emphasis does mean, though, that it has something here for almost everyone, from travel planners wondering how their industry might change to bloggers keen to gawp. The travel planners will be pleased to read about the inevitable growth in business travel, the urbanisation of China, and the myriad ways—ticket, key, bank card—that future smartphones will be used. And the gawpers will enjoy some of the technological ideas, such as the "cabin pods" into which airline passengers will climb from "railway-style boarding platforms" to await their plane's arrival, and the ways in which their own body heat will be used to fuel cabin appliances.

Readers still young enough to contemplate business travel in 2060 should get ready for holographic meetings, virtual telepathy and flights from Australia and Britain lasting less than four hours. On the other hand, the Gulf Coast will have been long abandoned, and travel managers will be known as "Employee Productivity Managers", so it's not all good news.