Airport wishlist : Intelligent sleeping lounges

Idea: In past couple of years, I have spent an incredible amount of time on the airports. Many of us usually do, especially when you are on a long trip and you have a stopover in the middle. Odds are that you are going to be spending a long-boring-lifeless-tiring time at the airport during such a stopover. If you are suffering from depression, this might just push you over the edge! I thought about making this stay bearable. I usually can't get decent sleep in flights due to insufficient leg-room, and hence the very first thought which crossed my mind was how about dark, (somewhat) soundproof, and intelligent sleeping lounges? You swipe in your boarding pass on your bed, and it records information about you and your flight and wakes you up right on time. Also, if there is any announcement for you or your flight, your bed records it for you while it wakes you up depending on the urgency of the announcement.

Reward: Sleep! Your body gets a chance to recover from the jet lag before your reach your final destination.

Bonus: Why pay for pricey memberships for various airline lounges if all your care about is getting a good sleep? You can also get your bed to order a bed-tea for you when you wake up!

It's an escort, it's a tour guide, it's your rental car!

Idea: Packaged tours are nice. Your day is planned, you have a tour guide who takes you everywhere. Sure you save some bucks, but you lose your privacy and freedom, and to certain extent your preferences. What if your rental car is the tour guide for you. It may come with a loaded yet configurable program, a voice activated command center, and a GPS. As soon as you land on a new place, with a few questions and answers, it can decide a romantic or an adventurous itinerary for you. It can also take you to your favorite restaurant and better yet, make reservations for you. Last but not the least, your car can provide you with historical background, local information, and some juicy gossips about the places you visit throughout your travel.

Reward: Sit back, relax and enjoy the ride!

Bonus: If yours is a bigger group and you end up renting multiple cars, it can also coordinate the crew, entertain them, and trigger conversation with random ice-breakers!

Social networking in flights

Idea: A flight journey may it be a long one or a short one, it's boring. Considering the capacity of the modern planes, a flight journey is a perfect candidate for social networking. A poor man's approach to this would be to distribute a questionnaire to each passenger asking them their name, occupation, interests, etc; and then match up (i.e. make them sit together) people with similar interests. Good news is technology comes to our aid now, and we have internet facility in flights. We can develop social networking applications (something like facebook for flights) or gizmos for this small subset of people, and in the end everybody leaves happy (not bored!) and maybe with a couple of new friends. People can share their travel experience, business class people hold a mini-conference, the possibilities are endless.

Reward: An interesting flight journey.

Bonus: Group games also might be possible here. e.g. Mafia, Poker, Quizzing, Two truths and a lie.