Expectations for 2014

After numerous trends, expectations and predictions being established by all industries and a vast majority of our Clients for the new year, I’ve decided to make a little compilation of my favorites. I also added my brutally honest opinion of each expectation, because telling the truth is more fun.

1. Smart watches, smart glasses and other wearable computing devices will be part of the airport of the future. – We’ve all been there, waiting hours in line at the airport, for check-in, immigration and all those long procedures of the passenger journey. I don’t know about you, but I’m open to any new technology that will save me those dreaded hours! If wearable computing is the answer to that then I’m a huuuuge supporter of this change, even if it will look like a fashion disaster.
2. Businesses will need to prioritize with a responsive social media design and to think about how consumers interact with them via mobile devices. – I mean yeah, we’ve all seen how social media can go wrong for a business and bring real damage to its reputation. (i.e. Racist tweet by a PR Exec in South Africa…) In my perspective, social media has indeed earned the crucial role of managing communications between a business and its customer. But now that more and more people own smartphones, it is even more important for businesses to be responsive, considering people can just comment right away on social media if something goes wrong. If they only had laptops or computers then they might forget by the time they get home to make a comment on a bad service experience. But with the smartphone or tablet at hand, they can complain at the peak of their anger! For this reason, I do agree that companies will need to step it up to stay up to speed.
3. Wi-Fi based location analytics will play a bigger role for organizations to increase business intelligence, define security policy, and improve customer/user Wi-Fi experience. – I just find this whole idea fascinating. How technology has come so far that we can track a person’s spending habits, whereabouts and interests with the use of Wi-Fi? Whether you like the idea or not, (or maybe it freaks you out a little bit) you have to admit that it’s pretty fascinating to see at what pace the world is evolving.

In any case, Dubai really is the place to be when it comes to these developments. I can tell you that my little hometown in Switzerland has a long way to go before it will be in any talks of a ‘Smart City’. It’s definitely always interesting to see the developments that each new year will bring.