Business travel can be a real slog. Travelers experience flight delays and jet lag, and then there’s the time away from home and family. But, in 2017, Travelers do enjoy several travel tech options that can make life on the road just a little bit easier.
Here’s a look at 5 compelling travel technologies we like for business travel, as well as one emerging innovation to keep an eye on in the near future.
1. The Bluesmart One Suitcase
The Bluesmart One is quickly becoming a status symbol for savvy business Travelers. This smart suitcase understands the unique needs of business travel, and it responds with a series of features that enhance, streamline and simplify the travel experience:
- Tracking: You can track your bag’s location, no matter where it is in the world, right from your own mobile device. Did your bag get stolen? Lost? Wonder no more where it is when you have this smart luggage.
- Charging: Airports and other transit venues often feel like electrical outlet deserts, places where travelers anxiously look at their ever-diminishing bars. This smart suitcase can charge your phone up to 6 times in a single journey.
- Weighing: Worried about going over a weight threshold and incurring additional fees? You can weigh your bag right from your phone, which allows you time to reallocate items to your carry-on and avoid paying more.
- Locking: You can lock and unlock your bag right from your phone, which delivers peace of mind as you’re traveling and your bag is making its way from plane to plane and from terminal to baggage claim.
The Bluesmart One is among your best carry on luggage options for 2017. Its lock and battery are TSA-compliant, which means it speeds through security checkpoints. And its specifications are meant to make sliding into even the tightest of overhead compartments a breeze.
2. Bluetooth Locks
Don’t want to spring for a smart suitcase? Get the next best thing when you protect your luggage with a Bluetooth padlock. We’ve come a long way since the days of analog locks that required codes or keys and that could be snapped with an everyday gardening tool.
A smart lock from a provider like Master Lock delivers the ability to lock and unlock your suitcase right from your smartphone, whether or not you’re in your bag’s immediate vicinity. You can also receive tamper alerts that let you know if someone’s trying to gain illicit access to your suitcase.
Take advantage of Bluetooth locks, but always be careful when checking locked luggage. If the TSA determines that your checked bag needs to be physically inspected, they reserve the right to break locks and place a notice in your bag.
3. Here One Wireless Headphones
Improvements in wireless devices have rapidly outpaced improvements in the wireless headphones that go with them. That is, options for Bluetooth earbuds just haven’t been very good in recent history.
That’s starting to change, and we think the Here Buds by Here One represent one of your best options for business travel. You enjoy premium audio quality and precise syncing with video streams. You can also access calls with a single tap, Siri or other virtual assistant programs with a double-tap, and you can turn up and down the intensity of the Here Buds’ noise-canceling system to tune into real-world conversations and announcements when needed.
The Here Buds aren’t just for travel either. Yes, they are ideal for tuning out a crying baby on a plane as you’re trying to work or get some rest. But they can also tune out office chatter as you’re focusing on a deadline or otherwise trying to reach peak productivity.
Update: https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-downfall-of-doppler-labs/
4. Seagate Seven Portable Drive
Streaming and remote storage access can be dicey propositions when traveling, especially when you’re spending time in international destinations. The Seagate Seven Portable Drive is the ideal solution for business Travelers who want to lighten the load but also have access to what they need when they need it.
The Seagate Seven Portable Drive claims to be the world’s thinnest at just 7 mm (.3 inches), with a 3.2-inch by 4.8-inch surface. It’s strong, too, able to survive being run over by a small car. No matter where you are or where you’re going, this portable hard drive lets you take along 500 MB that can be accessed via a rugged braided USB 3.0 cable.
What does this external hard drive mean for the Business Traveler? It means that you have reliable backup storage for large presentation files. It means that you can store enough HD video files to have a movie marathon both coming and going on flights between the United States and Australia. And it means freedom from unpredictable wireless connections in hotels, airports and on airplanes.
5. Luminette Light Therapy
At JTB USA Business Travel, we emphasize the importance of work-life balance and the need for Travelers to feel rested, relaxed and at their best when they wake up in a foreign city in a foreign time zone. That’s one reason why we like the Luminette Light Therapy.
Worn like glasses, the Luminette Light Therapy system uses white light enhanced with blue light to simulate the effects of sunlight and to activate “our body’s positive response to light.”
Tests show that 20- to 45-minute sessions wearing the Luminette Light Therapy system can help you sleep better, feel more energetic and recover more quickly from jet lag. Because the system is worn like glasses, you can do a session while eating breakfast, brushing your teeth or otherwise getting ready for the workday ahead.
Bonus: Driverless Vehicles!
We’ve all heard about the testing and future of driverless vehicles. But that future is likely to arrive far more quickly than most imagine.
Last August, Uber put driverless cars onto the streets of Pittsburgh. Other cities are likely to see driverless cars in the near future, too, and it’s not just Uber that’s dabbling in this technology. Google, Tesla, Ford and others are all in varying stages of developing and implementing self-driving technology.
In the future, it will be commonplace to hail a cab or summon an Uber only to find that there’s no driver — it will be downright surprising to see a ride service that fully relies on a human being. This introduction should help increase convenience for business Travelers and drive down vehicle-related costs for Travel Managers.
Discover New Travel Tech — And a Common Sense Approach to Business Travel
These new travel tech options can make life easier for business Travelers. And, at JTB USA Business Travel, we make life easier for Travel Managers and Executives through our common sense approach to business travel.
As a full-service business travel agency, we make sure that you have the technology, tools, guidance and support needed to see the best possible return on your investment in business travel.
Get in touch today and learn more about how we can improve your company’s business travel.
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