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.
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.
“Business Travel 2060”, a report (download here) from AirPlus, a payments company, is manna from 36,000 feet.
