The best resolutions are the ones we make for other people. In that spirit, we’d like to hear the fates make promises that:
• The Department of Transportation will drop its proposal to regulate agents and require them to disclose their commission and override arrangements.
• Nobody will make phone calls in flight, even if it’s permitted.
• The Statue of Liberty, up to and including the crown, will stay open, forever.
• Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary doesn’t say anything at all, all year.
• No hotel company will introduce or acquire more than six new brands this year.
• Somebody will invent a way to incorporate a lie detector into computer keyboards and touchscreens so we can start to believe those user reviews.
• Somebody will figure out what to do with the S.S. United States.
• Namibia will figure out a way to save its endangered rhino population without the revenue it gains from issuing rhino hunting permits.
• North Korea opens its borders, declares itself a democracy, holds free elections and welcomes tourists.
• Southwest completes its integration with AirTran before AirTran’s employees all reach retirement age.
• ASTA has a convention and just calls it “The ASTA Convention.”
• The Visa Waiver Program spreads to the Known Universe.
• The pope takes a vacation and packs light; both become fads.
• The average age of retail travel agents, and their clients, drops to 35.
• The airlines wake up and realize that most adults are not 5-foot-2 and 120 pounds and start adjusting their seat pitch accordingly.
• The terms “sequester,” “mixed use,” “accretive” and “remediate” mysteriously leave the language.
• All members of Congress take a cruise and then shut up about the cruise industry.
• WiFi becomes free, everywhere.
• The U.S. and Cuba decide to hug and make up.
• Defying the antitrust laws, cruise line CEOs agree to eliminate noncommisionable fees, and the Justice Department’s antitrust division looks the other way.
• IATA rewrites its NDC resolution so that everybody understands it — and then everybody likes it.
• The federal government will ease its restrictions on meetings so that government employees can have professional encounters in conference centers and hotels rather than school cafeterias.
• Travelers demand travel insurance without being reminded.
• Some genius invents a solar cell that can power a cruise ship.
• Britain will restructure its exorbitant Air Passenger Duty and bring it in line with the departure taxes of other civilized countries.
• Journalists and bloggers won’t put “travel agents” on their top 10 list of “dead-end careers” or “jobs that will soon be extinct.”
• The Sharing Economy produces world peace.
