Future Travel by Daniel Scott
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As we reach the end of another year and the reality of space tourism gets ever closer, it is worth considering what travel trends will become commonplace in the next two decades. So here’s a lighthearted look at ten types of tourism that we might be experiencing in the not-too-distant future.
1. Space tourism
Yes, if you’ve got a spare $US200,000 then you can sign up for Virgin Galactic’s first commercial sub-orbital flights, due to launch in 2009. While becoming one of the first space tourists would undoubtedly send your Frequent Flyer points soaring there could be some unexpected problems associated with it, including bouts of space rage, abysmal rocket lag and even lost luggage. Imagine the excuses: “sorry mate, your bag’s hovering just above the earth’s atmosphere, it could take us a few thousand light years to get it back!”
2. Fly me to the moon
Not content with hurtling through space, it surely won’t be long before the well-heeled are traveling all the way to the moon. Once there, the only likely choice of hotel will be Las Vegas style, full of gaming machines, virtually free grog (duty being low on the moon) and Celine Dion shows. Outside the choice of activities will be limited. Guided moonwalks will carry the real risk of floating away and lunar safaris in search of the moon’s newly discovered whistling marsupials, the “clangers”, will often end in disappointment due to their notorious shyness.
3. A brand new underwater world
Un-arrested global warming will have some advantages. Present above-water holiday destinations like Venice and the Maldives will become spectacular underwater sites like Atlantis. In the case of Venice, fully shrink-wrapped before it finally sank in 2015, submarines will ferry tourists to an entrance docking station and once inside the bubble, visitors will be able to enjoy the ancient city almost as it once was, pausing at oxygen bars for an air cocktail when the sightseeing gets tiring.
4. Theme parks gone mad
The popularity of theme parks will continue unabated. In Australia the Northern Territory will become a giant “Jurassic Park” featuring life-sized mechanical dinosaurs roaming the Outback. In Sydney, “Convictworld” will be hugely popular, offering the chance to spend a day in leg irons, do ten hours hard labour in the sun and rewrite history by being nice to indigenous Australians. In the UK, the abolished monarchy will welcome visitors to “Royalty” theme parks, where there’ll be lessons in speaking on any subject with a plum in your mouth and an opportunity to go mock hunting with a rubber fox and a bunch of other dummies.
5. Cruising but going nowhere
2018 will see the first of the so-called “Superliners”, thirty storeys high and too huge to actually leave port. Sydney harbour will have its own permanently-anchored liner, with 40 different restaurants, 86 shops, four casinos and twelve different shows every night.
6. Adventure tourism gone mad
The thirst for out-there travel will just grow and trips will become more hazardous. Customers on “Survival Escapes” will be dropped in the middle of the desert without food or water or left to fend for themselves on diminishing ice flows in Antarctica. It won’t be enough any more to visit the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State building – the growing trend will be to scale them and then hang-glide off the top.
7. Virtual time-travel
While actually returning to a different era will still be a dream, virtual devices will give us a greater feeling of being inside an historical period than ever before, bringing alive tourist destinations. In Europe, using specially adapted headgear it will be possible to smell what the Vikings smelt, experience what rotting Elizabethan teeth felt like and even become Shakespeare for a day. In Israel, meanwhile, there will be the chance to attend the birth of Christ and follow it up with an interactive Last Supper.
8. Why leave home?
Technology will be so advanced in fact that many will just stay in front of their twenty-dimensional computer screens and spend a morning wandering along the edge of the electronically-generated Grand Canyon followed by an afternoon in a life-sized recreation of the many galleries of the Louvre.
9. To sleep perchance to dream
While, by 2020, every street corner will have its urban spa, catering to stressed workers, the new holiday concept will be glitzy so-called “zzz” resorts, where visitors are given snooze lessons by small, advanced babies before being encouraged to climb into gum trees and chew eucalyptus leaves for hours on end. For overwhelmed execs there will be special packages in which they check in for a weekend break and are immediately put into a deep sleep for 48 hours.
10. A change is as good as a break
Finally, there will a growing trend for “impersonation” tourism, in which there will be opportunities to become anything from a garbo to a taxidermist for a week. At the upper end of the market the chance to impersonate a politician will be particularly popular because tourists will have the opportunity (under parliamentary privilege) to lie, argue about nothing and say as many stupid things as they like.