Travelism and Life in 2050

It is a tour de force, where a touch of science fiction is woven through serious academic research, with alternate scenarios to test his hypothesis.

Above all, it is fun to read, as Ian wanders irreverently around a world dominated by billions of Asian travellers from hundreds of megacities and where third-age tourists are still working routinely. He takes a tongue-in-cheek view of the coalescence of consumer choice and destination service through seamless shared technology which interfaces naturally with human thought.

His brilliant description of the re-invention of Amsterdam's famous night life by the use of android sex workers reads like a combination of Harold Robbins, Mr Spock and Dr Phil. But it carries a serious message about creatively confronting today's deep-rooted social challenges around sex tourism. His careful description of Korean tourists from a somewhat homogenised future, celebrating a return to today's simple life with a traditional Kimchi meal overseen by a 135-year-old chef is entirely believable, as is his analysis of Singapore's incredibly planned focus on the lucrative meetings and medical market segments.

There are a couple of places where the analysis falls a little short. First, the assumption that New Zealand would need any support to remain dominant in world class rugby ignores the lessons of history; but he nicely recovers by using this as a base for rightly covering the massive impact of sport, entertainment, telecommunications and travel. Second, his coverage of the response to climate change could put more emphasis on the fact that over the next 40 years a combination of necessary regulation, massive capital injections and dramatic technology innovations will solve those parts of the problem which humans can fix. And the unfixable will be part of our planet's future with or without humankind, as natural disasters in the previous year have again demonstrated the immense power of nature.