Top Ten Travel Predictions for 2016

Published January 1, 2016 | By Clark Norton

Tuvalu will become a center for Climate Change Tourism. Photo from Timeless Tuvalu

Peering into my crystal ball for 2016 — which due to budgetary concerns is more like fiberglass this year — I foresee the following top ten developments in the ever-changing, sometimes wacky world of travel:

Try to pare this down to wallet size, please.

A 747 will be diverted from Omaha to New Orleans overnight because passengers in seats A and B get into a spat over who can claim the middle armrest. Oddly, none of the hundreds of passengers aboard complain as they gobble down their jambalaya and beignets.
Spurred by the success of a tour agency named “Toodle-oo Tuvalu” and a boutique hotel called “Sinking Along With the Breeze,” Climate Change Tourism will be huge, in which ghoulish travelers will journey to low-lying Pacific atolls soon to be inundated by rising ocean waters.
Another emerging travel trend: the Two-Hour Mini-Vacation. Pioneered by the tour company Take a Hike (Around the Block), the two-hour vacation fits neatly into today’s action-packed lifestyles and for those working three jobs to pay the rent.
European river cruising will become so popular that river ships docking side by side will block an entire German waterway, and even worse, ruin the views from the ship balconies.
To save money on airline tickets, a frustrated flyer will try to pass his wife off as carry-on luggage only to find she does not fit under the seat or into the overhead compartment. She did, however, make it through TSA security .
Cut-rate Spirit Airlines will reduce the size of a permitted carry-on to that of a typical man’s wallet, “as long as it’s not overstuffed with cash and credit cards” and is kept “securely inside a pocket, unless removed to buy food items on the plane.”
The hottest new food-and-drink pairing to sweep the country will be craft whiskies and freshly made donuts. Whiskey-donut aficionados will point out that the combo of margaritas and tortilla chips was once thought to be “weird.”
Advertisers will start shunning Millennials as “too old to be swayed” and will aim the bulk of their travel pitches at grade schoolers, “who call the shots in most families anyway.” Baby boomer travelers will once again be completely ignored, but, of course, end up footing most of the bills.
Glossy “Truth-in-Travel” magazines will print countless stories on “Where to Go in 2016,” with the places mostly chosen by where the publishers hope to land comped trips in the coming year.
On the bright side, all of your travels and mine will be worry-free and filled with moments both memorable and refreshing to the soul. Keep me posted on where you’re going in 2016, what you’d like to read about on my blog, and safe travels to all!