Do you wonder what travel will be like in 2024?

The travel search site Skyscanner is giving us a peek into the future in a report released today called "the future of travel 2024." The report predicts how we will plan, book, and experience travel in the future.Travelers in the '20s will use wearable intelligent technology. A "Digital Travel Buddy" or "e-Agent" will a pany us at all times inside, say, a watch or piece of jewelry. The buddy will be connected to the web and know our personal preferences."It could have the face, voice and personality of our favorite actor or edian and appear to us as a 3D hologram image, or inside a virtual environment, at our verbal mand," said Daniel Burrus, author of "Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition," in the report.

We are seeing the beginning of this technology in Google Glass, a wearable puter that presents hands-free information. By the '20s, these wearable devices will shrink down and gain more capabilities—making the "Digital Travel Buddy" a reality.Virtual reality headsets will allow us to experience potential destinations from the fort of our homes. Want to sample Hawaii by taking a 3D stroll along a beautiful Hawaiian shore?kashgar border transfer No problem. You may even "feel" the sand between your toes with the aid of haptic technologies.Gone will be the days of sitting, hunched over your puter, typing destinations and travel preferences on several websites and paring results. Semantic websites, with the aid of speech recognition technology and facial coding algorithms, will enable us to book using speech and body language. Our Digital Travel Buddy will connect us to the sites.

"Travel services such as Skyscanner will be able to deploy online semantic and intuitive tools that will know your preferences:silk road group tour that you are a regular business traveler, that you only ever take carry-on, that you always fly first-class and like to stay in a four-star hotel no more than a mile from your meeting," said Filip Filipov, Skyscanner's head of B2B, in the report.If all of this sounds far-fetched, it's not, say the experts. The technology is already there. Here are just a few examples from the report:Intel's RealSense 3D camera is being designed to read our facial expressions and body language to gauge our mood and respond.

From booking the right ticket to riding in optimum fort

3RD Planet has developed a CGI tool that lets you take a realistic walk through the streets of a city.Disney's REVEL gives tactile feedback through vibrations from virtual 3D objects.Tech firm Affectiva is creating a facial coding algorithm that will enable travel search sites to read your expression.Said Dr. Ian Yoeman, a travel futurologist, in the report: "Our young children will think that it is pletely natural to talk to a machine that understands them without tapping a keyboard or touching a screen."You get to the station on time, find your platform, and hop on the train, right? Not so fast. When it es to European rail travel, the decisions that will shape your trip start long before you step foot on the train. And while a train journey can be enjoyable and relaxing with unmatched scenery to boot there are plenty of pitfalls along the way that can easily derail your trip.

From booking the right ticket to riding in optimum fort, here are 10 tried-and-tested tips that will help you avoid mon mishaps and travel successfully.Like a choose your own adventure novel, booking a train journey is a series of decisions that lead to even more choices. With a little patience and planning, however, your ending is likely to be a happy one. First, you'll need to choose between city-to-city tickets and rail passes. Your best choice depends on how much you want to travel and how flexible your plans are. Second, each option es in two forms. If you're just traveling point-to-point, you can either purchase an open ticket, good for one month from the date of issue, or a ticket with a reservation, which is only good for a specific train at a specific time. Rail passes, best if you're traveling within a country or several countries and planning on a lot of travel, can be either consecutive valid for unlimited train travel or flexi valid for a fixed number of travel days.

Choose the right bination and you'll maximize your journey while minimizing your cost.Ticket or pass? Continuous or flexible? First class or second? Senior/youth or adult? Is rail-travel shopping giving you vertigo? If so, don't worry. Distributers like North American-based Rail Europe will help you find your center by sorting out all the options and helping you save money through booking tools and customer service.

Downsizing and getting rid of most of their belongings

Downsizing and getting rid of most of their belongings, except what they could fit into a small storage unit, "was hard" but not "horrible," she says. "We held on to treasures such photos, jewelry, little memorabilia, but desks, lamps, chairs and coffee tables — those are all gone."They had to find a new home for their Jack Russell Terrier. "That was really incredibly hard, but we found the right people. He lives on a 20-acre vineyard with five other terriers. He's in heaven. He's treated like a king."She says you don't have to be rich to do this. "We're not wealthy people," but "our financial adviser has done very well for us," she says.

They live on i e from their investments about $6,000 a month, Social Security and a small pension. They haven't had to touch their nest egg, which they are saving so "we can take care of ourselves for the rest of our lives and aren't a burden to our children. We want to be responsible for our own upkeep.
"We have never spent one more dime than we did when we lived in California," Lynne says. "If you take the amount that it costs you in overhead to live in a house with insurance, taxes, upkeep, repairs for us it has e out the same."Tim says he enjoys doing all the travel planning, including finding their one-bedroom apartments on homeaway . An apartment on the beach in Portugal costs less than $1,800 a month, Lynne says.Silk road tours The vacation rentals are always clean, "but there has never been one that has a really truly fortable sofa," she says.

To try to keep their costs under control, they rotate stays in pricey cities like London and Paris with stints in cheaper countries like Mexico and Turkey, Lynne says.One of their favorite modes of transportation is repositioning voyages, which is when cruise lines move their ships seasonally and offer great bargains, she says. Xinjiang Intencive tour "We've crossed the Atlantic four times like that."When it es to municating with people in other countries, they aren't fluent in any foreign languages but are able to get by with knowing words such as please, thank you and excuse me. "Smiling, pointing at things and being agreeable works wonders in any language."They have had plenty of trials and tribulations along the way including trying to figure out how to operate microwaves, televisions and washers and dryers in other countries.

Taking advantage of last-minute travel bargains

Question: A reader writes that she and her husband are retired, older than 70 and want to travel. They can leave at a moment's notice, so they want to know whether they can take advantage of last-minute deals and, if so, where. For security reasons, we are not using their names, which are unusual and could make them a target of thieves.Answer: Travel industry providers have trained us to expect to pay a premium for last-minute travel, except when it's to their benefit, such as moving unsold inventory that will otherwise go unused. Then we are their new BFFs.It's a twisted relationship, but if you're like the letter writer, you can put up with a lot to save a lot.

First, look for package discounts that bine a hotel stay or cruise with airfare, for example. That's the advice of Sarah Gavin, an Expedia travel expert. Not doing so, she says, is the No. 1 travel mistake. You'll save at least 10% on average, she says, and often more if you're traveling to a big vacation market such as the Caribbean or Hawaii.Second, she says, social media are your friend. Airlines will send email blasts with last-minute deals, but you'll find excellent "flash sales" on social media especially Twitter.Which leads to her third tip: Hold the phone. As people b e increasingly fortable booking on their smartphones, it's wise to keep yours at hand. About half the public has a smartphone these days, and this puts you in the thick of the bargain hunt.

Not that there's a lack of places to find bargains. On Monday, I found a four-night Monday-Friday package to San José del Cabo, Mexico, that included flight and hotel for $617 per person, double occupancy. The hotel was Melia Cabo Real All-Inclusive Beach Golf Resort, which generally gets very good marks on TripAdvisor. There was a $25-a-night double-occupancy deal for the Malika d'Angkor Boutique Hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia includes transfers and the use of a bicycle, which gets good to very good marks on TripAdvisor. Because the deals change according to the need of the travel property, they may have disappeared, but new ones will be in their stead.It gave me a $2,023-per-person six-night trip to London, which included airfare, based on double occupancy, and a double room at the Best Western near Paddington Station for an April 10-17 trip.

That's still fewer people than take the bus

The sensation I got was that the investment firms in Brazil are a lot more conservative, and Global Founders is much more aggressive. You're going for No. 1 or nothing. And our mission in Brazil is to be the No. 1 travel metasearch engine, and now we have the resources."Global Founders Capital is a new investment arm for Rocket Internet, the world's largest digital incubator, which has funded Brazilian startups like Dafiti, a fashion merce site that closed 2012 with $200mm in revenue.GFC invests aggressively in emerging markets, and Brazil's travel market is certainly emergent in some respects. travels-silkroad Brazil is late to the low-cost airfare party that has been going strong in the U.S., Europe and Asia, which the Wall Street Journal chalks up to "government regulation, poor airport infrastructure and the dominance of flag carriers."

But with "rising wages, government support, improving infrastructure and the failure or consolidation of some of the region's biggest full-service carriers," Brazilians are starting to spend more time flying the friendly skies.Paiva says the market is fertile for low-cost airlines – and flight parison sites like Voopter. xinjiang travel "The first reason is that demand for air travel was repressed by really high ticket prices. Air travel used to be a privilege reserved only for the highest economic class. It's still expensive, but it's a lot cheaper than they used to be. And that has to do with the introduction of new airlines in Brazil like Azul and Avianca."
Since JetBlue founder David Neeleman's discount airline Azul "Blue" landed in Brazil in 2009, Brazilians taking flight have jumped 40 percent to 94.6 million people. That's still fewer people than take the bus, but bus travel is down 3 percent in the same period to 126 million people.

In 2011, about 5 percent of the country 10.7 million Brazilians flew for the very first time. And more Brazilians are going abroad than ever. Brazilians are the second-largest source of foreign tourists in New York alone, and the fastest-growing.
Paiva also cites a piece of Open Skies legislation expected to be approved this year, which would allow foreign airlines to operate domestic routes in Brazil, possibly in time for 3.6 million World Cup travelers this summer four out of five will be Brazilians.

And the best airline in the U.S. is ...

Headley said the drop in plaints might also reflect "a certain amount of resignation" that "it's never wonderful for airline passengers."It's not clear that the researchers captured the mood of travelers. No matter how much people gripe about airlines, very few of the millions of fliers ever bother to file a plaint with the government. The Department of Transportation, or DOT, received just 9,684 plaints last year after getting 11,447 in 2012.Chris Lopinto, CEO of ExpertFlyer and not involved in the academic report, said he believes that most consumers plain directly to the airlines instead."The DOT can't p you miles or p you a voucher only the airlines can do that," Lopinto said. "A passenger might not think to file with DOT."

Most of the worst grades from late flights and lost bags to bumping passengers off planes were earned by smaller regional airlines. In the overall standings, American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines, finished last,China west tour just ahead of SkyWest and ExpressJet, which operate regional flights for United and Delta.Regional airlines fly smaller planes, their flights are the first to be canceled in bad weather, and they operate at smaller airports that might lack the maintenance capability of bigger airports. However, they have b e critical to the so-called hub-and-spoke system that United, American and Delta use to connect passengers to flights at big "hub" airports."If you have hubs, you need spokes or the wheel doesn't work,"kashgar border transfer Headley said.BAG HANDLING: The rate of lost, stolen or delayed bags rose 5 percent.

Virgin America ranked No. 1 in an annual airline rating report for the second consecutive year.Overall, the U.S. airline industry had its best-ever performance in 2013 on the Airline Quality Rating, released Monday. The statistical study of U.S. airlines, co-authored by aviation and marketing professors, has been conducted since 1991.The airline ratings are determined using a formula that considers multiple factors in consumer decision-making. On-time performance receives the most weight in the formula, followed by denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer plaints. Data for all the criteria are drawn from the U.S. Department of Transportation's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report.

The world's busiest airport is ...

Virgin America, the top overall scorer, had a slight dip in its on-time performance in 2013 from 2012, dropping to 82.1% from 83.5%. The airline had the best record for baggage handling in 2013 among all the airlines rated.The U.S. airline industry saw an overall improvement in 2013 over 2012, according to the study, despite declines in two of four areas considered."I think generally speaking for the last several years we've been in a pretty good place from a performance standpoint," said study co-author Dean Headley, an associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University. The Airline Quality Rating is conducted jointly by Headley and Brent Bowen, a professor and dean at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

"As an industry we're in a good spot. People seem to be flying. Price isn't scaring them away, which seems to be what people look at most," Headley said. What doesn't always match up with performance is consumer perception of air travel, he said. The ratings don't assess airfares.On-time performance for U.S. airlines dropped in 2013 from 2012, with 78.4% of arrivals on time in 2013, pared with 81.8% in 2012. The number of mishandled bags jumped in 2013, from 3.07 per 1,000 passengers in 2012 to 3.21 in 2013.Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance 93.3% among the 15 U.S. airlines rated, while American Eagle's 72.1% on-time arrivals put it at the bottom of the pack.Industry performance improved in two of the four areas considered, with fewer denied boardings and customer plaints in 2013 than 2012.

Southwest Airlines had the lowest consumer plaint rate of all airlines -- 0.34 per 100,000 passengers. Southwest routinely has the fewest customer plaints among U.S. airlines. Frontier had the highest rate of customer plaints, with 3.09 per 100,000 passengers.The industry is definitely in a period of readjustment, Headley said. United-Continental is still ironing out its merger, and the Southwest-AirTran and American-US Airways mergers still have a way to go. Things are bound to change for consumers, he said."I would stay flexible, as always. When you're traveling by air, you may have your favorite carrier, routes and times, but stay flexible. Everything's on the block at some point."

Tours By Unger goes where ordinary travelers can't

Maxwell grew up in South Boston, where bars served as the neighborhood living rooms hosting family dinners, birthdays and weddings. In this new series, he will take his respect and appreciation for specialty cocktails to explore new locales, seeking out the people, places, customs and cultures behind drinks across the globe. "Booze Traveler"is greenlit for eight one-hour episodes produced by Karga Seven Pictures in association with White Reindeer Productions.Expedition Unknown chronicles the adventures of Josh Gates as he investigates iconic mysteries across the globe. Gates begins by interviewing key eyewitnesses and uncovering recent developments in the story, then springboards into a fully immersive exploration. Uyghur culture This authentic, roughshod adventure leads Gates closer to the truth behind these unanswered global enigmas, such as the disappearance of Amelia Earhart's plane.

"Expedition Unknown" is greenlit for six one-hour episodes produced by Ping Pong Productions.Hotel Amazon chronicles longtime friends Rusty Johnson and Stephan Jablonski as they leave New York to pursue their dream of building a world-class resort in the middle of the Peruvian Amazon. Johnson and Jablonski discover that the Amazon is a fierce terrain, and building a luxury resort on top of it is a grueling endeavor. In order to reach their goals, china tour operators Johnson and Jablowski need to ove e dire conditions, including harsh jungle weather, dangerous native creatures and a severe lack of essential supplies. "Hotel Amazon"is greenlit for six one-hour episodes produced by Crazy Legs Productions.

Resort Rescue follows world-famous hospitality consultant Shane Green as he helps hotel and resort owners figure out what's going wrong inside their establishments. Green watches every move through hidden surveillance footage taken across the premises. Afterwards, Green reveals his findings to the owners and shows them how to fix these lingering issues. "Resort Rescue" is greenlit for 13 one-hour episodes produced by Relativity TV.Tours By Unger goes where ordinary travelers can't, pulling back the curtain on the hidden history all around us. Host Brian Unger is the ultimate tour guide, bringing his irreverent humor and point of view to fascinating places most Americans don't know about.

The final clue always leads them to their ticket home

"Tours by Unger"is greenlit for six half-hour episodes produced by Half Yard Productions.Underground BBQ Challenge pits neighbors against neighbors across the country in an epic BBQ cooking contest. Host and acclaimed chef G. Garvin offers two teams of local grill masters a chance to prove they've got the chops to represent their town with the tastiest, most creatively cooked and presented BBQ. Garvin and two local judges decide which neighborhood's dish will win the Underground BBQ Challenge and the $10,000 prize. "Underground BBQ Challenge" is greenlit for eight one-hour episodes produced by The Michael Group.World Access is an immersive exploration of fascinating sites and hidden locations. A team consisting of highly trained experts and journalists lead viewers on an incredible journey through amazing landscapes and odd tourist destinations.

"World Access"is greenlit for seven one-hour episodes produced by Indigo Films.Specials:One Day On Earth shows sights and sounds in countries from all over the globe, captured all on the same day. From before sunrise to after sunset, viewers witness all the stories that shape us from bustling cities to exotic jungles to the rolling countryside celebrating life and discovering our shared connections. "One Day on Earth" is greenlit for a one-hour special produced by Electus.In Development:1 Way Ticket surprises couples with a free trip to an exotic location after friends secretly nominate them. Once they land, the travelers follow clues that will lead them on a series of thrilling and locale-specific adventures.

The final clue always leads them to their ticket home. "1 Way Ticket" is a series in development greenlit for two half-hour episodes produced by JOHLT Productions.U.S. net Travel Channel is to introduce audiences to hidden cultures, culinary adventures and new travel personalities via a roster of 10 new series, one special, and a series which is in development.
Culture focused series being rolled out by the channel includethe 8 x 60-minute Big Crazy Family Adventure working title, which follows explorer-writer Bruce Kirkby pictured above as he treks from Vancouver to the Himalayas with his wife and two children

Neil deGrasse Tyson is clearly a very gifted teacher

His daughter was very well-behaved, he said, but that's how she's always been. "Shannon has always had a great temperament," he writes. "I never had to do anything to make her behave. ... She was and is quite mature for her age."Sounds like a dad who knows his daughter.What age do you think is the right age for children to travel? Please share your family's experience in the ments below.This week's episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey really honored the "spacetime" ponent of the series' title. Veering away from the science history vignettes of recent episodes but not their anti-creationist campaign the fourth episode in the rebooted series was all about the laws of physics, and what happens when they're broken. What if everything that is happening has already happened?Danielle: I have to say that I think this week's episode was the most informative so far.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is clearly a very gifted teacher, and his explanation of Einstein's principles of relativity was illuminating. And the approach looking at how time travel works in the context of the space-time continuum, and the types of illusions we confront each day was captivating. This was also the first time he threw some hard math our way, which I enjoyed. Plus black holes are cool, and imagining what happens within a black hole is also cool.Abby: So first of all, I'm pretty sure this week's episode means that Neil deGrasse Tyson is a Time Lord. The science fiction portion of the show where Tyson slides from what we know about black holes to the coolest things we can plausibly imagine about them was a much-needed demonstration of educated fantasy.

Danielle: I don't actually know anything about string theory, but this is a broad strokes explanation of string theory, right? Black holes could potentially break the laws of physics, and possibly act as a portal to other universes, or times, or dimensions? Okay I'm going to go reread Flatland and then A Wrinkle In Time, brb.Abby: Yes, good, me too. I think you're correct, although I too have a giant string theory blind spot. I know menters on the internet are really reluctant to tell someone they're wrong about something, now might be a good opportunity to try that out, people.