International Travel and Migration in the 4IR

Abstract

The fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is changing today’s world. Globally, 64 percent of all migrant travellers has migrated for employment. However, traditional models of employment are increasingly replaced by new developments associated with 4IR technologies. This height of technological advancements in some aspects are creating inadvertent challenges. A major development in the travel and tourism sector in the 4IR, is the disruption of the traditional tourism accommodation model of renting space. Challenging this model, Airbnb became operational from 2009, as a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world. While the pre-travel stage is highly influenced by developments such as platforms and market places for researching and booking, the experience in the travel stage is closely intertwined to border control. The 4IR can add length and breadth to increase efficiency in border control by overhauling individual privacy and identity management related to border control, and address issues such as queues, wait time, airline efficiency, and customer experience. A technology that is increasingly used in identity management and individual privacy is blockchain. Blockchain is a public database or chain that stores cryptographically linked digital information, which is called a ‘block’. The security feature of blockchain is the unique identifier called ‘hash’, which stores cryptographic hash of the previous block, linking all blocks into a chain. Due to its design, tampering with data in a block is nearly impossible.