From Chaos to Collaboration - The Shape of Travel in 2020

Who among us who has travelled has not experienced some frustration with the experience? Whether it is being surrounded by tourist traps, lost luggage, difficulties with security or something else, we've all experienced frustrations and wondered why it hasn't improved at all.
Whether it is official or not, the travel experience as experienced by a large number of travellers is less than ideal.
In fact, a new report has come out that details how travel could be better and unsurprisingly luggage that follows you around is high on travellers priorities but also somewhat surprising are the desired security enhancements.
Reshaping the travel experience is essential as we move forward and given the advancements of technology in the last decade alone, there is set to be a revolution in the travel and tourism industry, but how to prioritise? Well, Amadeus (a company who provides services to the travel and tourism industry), have set their sights on the future and created a report and infographic about the shape the future of travel could take.
The report brings together the insights of eighteen travel industry experts and of 1,437 travellers surveyed in Brazil, China, Russia, Spain, UAE, UK and US.
The report looks at a variety of issues from travel stress to augmented reality including things like health checks, cloud access, RFID luggae and more.
Facial recognition technology and increasing the ease with which a traveller makes their way through the airport was a key finding of the report.
From passport control with long range fingerprinting to biometric passports and border controls, the journey through the airport was scrutinized and you can read about how technology is set to improve this, at times, stressful part of your journey in the report or check out the infographic because it is interactive! There is a ton of detail in the report and the infographic on the blog is much better because you can share to Facebook or twitter from right within each section of the infographic.
If only we could vote for what we wanted we could change the face of travel ourselves! Far from being security-phobic, the modern traveller seems to have embraced enhanced security to almost ridiculous levels with long-distance finger printing technologies among the desirable tech advancements.
What isn't clear is how the question was phrased from the infographic, leading those who read the report to perhaps ponder the context for the question, as well as the implications of such technology.
In addition to this long-distance fingerprinting technology, another security enhancement that topped the list was facial recognition.
While the news is full of the failures of this technology to help, and in fact in some cases it has hindered security efforts, it still seems that among travellers anything, even faulty technology, is desirable in comparison to what there is now.
It is slightly disconcerting how close to a "Minority Report" world we are moving towards but with Google moving towards harmonised privacy so everyones detail's are shared with every system.
Will we lack privacy to the expect that long distance identification will seem unobtrusive? Who knows.
The key thread running through this report is that travel will become more collaborative over the next decade, both in terms of how people travel, and how travel providers work together with travellers.
This collaboration will help reduce the stress, uncertainty and chaos that is present today, due partly to the onset of mass tourism.