Update in July 2022 on this April 2021 travel industry forecast.  Paris is heaving with tourists, Barcelona the same, while many flights between Europe and the US are packed to bursting. As I predicted would happen, a rapid bounce-back has taken place.

Along with manufacturing, retail and banking, the travel industry will be a fundamental engine of future globalisation, despite the huge impact of the COVID pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The reason is that human beings are genetically programmed to travel as hunter-gatherers, and have an irresistible urge to explore. (Written April 2021)

And as experience showed in 2020, whenever local, national or regional restrictions ease a little, huge numbers started booking trips almost immediately.  This was all helped by global COVID passports - showing evidence of COVID infection in the past, or vaccination or very recent negative tests. 

Just as I predicted in April 2021, we are now seeing pent-up demand, as people look to spend more than usual on holidays using saved up budgets during lockdown.

Therefore, whatever happens in the current pandemic, to the global economy, or in other world events, in general terms over the next 30 years we can expect the number of people travelling each day to grow dramatically as wealth increases, and as real costs of transport continue to fall.

Consider this: 85% of humanity lives in emerging markets, and most people in the world are still dreaming of taking their first flight one day.The greatest growth in travel will be within Asia, and in people from Asia visiting outside their own region. We will see a rapid increase in the number and size of regional airports, high-speed rail networks, and new roads.

First question: You warned many times over the last few years of the risks of a new viral pandemic.  What do you think will happen next with COVID?

Yes.  In The Future of Almost Everything for example, my 17th book published in 2019, I again warned of viral pandemic threats.  

On page 19, I wrote a list of Wild Cards - top of which was ""Viral plaque - rapidly spreading, cases in every nation".  Another on the list was "Miscalculation by a powerful nation leading to sustained regional conflict" - but that's another story.

I have been tracking many new mutant viruses for over three decades now and on average we see one every year, often emerging in the Far East for reasons we don't fully understand.When I was 30 years old, my work caring for those dying of cancer at home was suddenly overwhelmed by people dying from a new mutant virus that appeared from nowhere, having jumped from animals into humans.  It was spreading fast, created massive fear and panic, with no vaccine or cure, and that virus has since killed 35 million people.Over 30 years later, despite vast research efforts we still have no vaccine nor a cure.  That virus was HIV, causing AIDS.  

So I have always worried that we would see more mutant viruses appear from nowhere and go global.

What is the outlook for the energy industry for the next decade?  I have advised many of the largest green energy companies and traditional energy companies on the future. 

In “The Future of Almost Everything” published in 2019, I warned that unstable prices would create a lot of chaos in future for energy companies, and I was right.  Energy forecasts always have to be seen in the context of the global economy, geopolitics, technology, innovation, urbanisation, migration and social transformation.  I wrote in 2019 that we would be likely to see unstable oil prices with all kinds of supply and demand shocks, and prices ranging from above $180 to below $40. Just so. 

And I also wrote that these price convulsions would drive many green energy companies out of business, which is what is already happening...

Yet in many ways, despite recent shocks, the fundamentals of successful logistics and supply chain management are still changing relatively slowly. 

For example, before COVID, moving a container 150km by lorry from Birmingham to Southampton cost the same as moving the same container 10,000km by sea from Southampton to Beijing. It is cheaper to transport melons from Istanbul to Naples than to drive melons from a village up in the Italian mountains, to the same market.  This overwhelmingly huge difference in sea freight costs compared to roads will be one of the single greatest drivers of future global trade, over the next 30-50 years, despite increased energy costs. It is the primary reason why global trade has grown at twice the rate of global production over the last 30 years...