Futurists foresee rapid growth in global travel

4:11 p.m., Feb. 28, 2005--Fred J. DeMicco, Marvin Cetron and Owen Davies have seen the future, and it’s space elevators, robotic cleaning crews, condos on cruise ships and 100 million new travelers from China.

DeMicco, ARAMARK Chair and chairperson of the Department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at UD; Cetron, founder of Forecasting International, a company that predicted the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; and Davies, a consultant for Forecasting International, have coauthored Hospitality 2010: The Future of Hospitality and Travel.

The authors foresee rapid growth in tourism, including 50 million Indian travelers and 100 million Chinese tourists a year by 2020. According to Cetron, whose Forecasting International provides trend information to Fortune 500 companies, the growing middle class in both Asian countries will buoy world tourism.

DeMicco said American fast-food chains already are opening at the rate of about one restaurant per day in China, and the Chinese are building airports, hotels and restaurants to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He said Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s hotel program is receiving 39,000 applications for the 189 slots in its freshman class.

DeMicco said cruise travel, now at record-high levels, will grow to the point that some retirees will move to cruise condos, permanent homes aboard ship. The book discusses the perks that currently draw customers to luxury ships—stewards who spritz sunbathing patrons with Evian water, crews who study hundreds of mug shots so they can call every guest by name by the second day of the cruise and computers that remind bartenders how a guest liked his martini the last time he sailed with the line.

The authors said labor shortages will be a large issue for the hospitality industry as baby boomers are replaced with Gen-X workers, who may be less loyal to companies and more entrepreneurial, but automation will mitigate the shortage.

DeMicco said sanitation robots could help clean restaurants, while robotic sandwich-makers would prepare some dishes. Already, when you veer into the drive-through, your order may be taken by a cyber-servant operating in another state and relayed back to the local restaurant in real time.

The authors said automation will have major effects on their industry—from global-positioning-system cell phones that provide coupons for restaurants you are near to planes routed by global positioning software so they can safely travel much closer together than current routes.

Tourism to America dropped 30 percent when stricter security regulations were instituted after the Sept. 11, 2002, terrorist attacks, according to the book, and eight airlines and eight cruise lines went out of business or filed for bankruptcy protection.

Cetron said the travel industry is finally doing better than it did pre-Sept. 11, but there are possible clouds.

“We have what now is the perfect storm between the problem with the Dec. 26 Asian tsunami, the problems with SARS, the problem with bird viruses and the problems with the dollar and terrorism,’’ he said.

He said terrorists could use weapons of “mass disruption,” rather than “mass destruction,” to tip the hospitality industry.

“Almost 70 percent of our gross domestic product is based on consumerism and 80 percent of that is on credit cards,’’ Cetron said. “If terrorists screw up the processing of our credit cards, the industry hurt the most would be hospitality.’’

The book, aside from terrorism, paints a rosy future for the hospitality industry and for travel lovers, particularly for those who have a hearty travel budget:

The authors suggest sophisticated translators built into electronic organizers will make it easier to travel widely without knowledge of foreign languages;
Longer life spans and healthier consumers will create a larger market for adventure tours, with Antarctica becoming a popular destination;.
The cruise market could double by 2010 if only 1 percent of the anticipated 100 million Chinese annual travelers take a cruise each year; and
Undersea restaurants will become fact, not fantasy. In Dubai, the deluxe Al Arab Hotel already is serving seafood to diners who board a submarine to travel to a dining room submerged beneath the Red Sea.

Article by Kathy Canavan

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