The Future of Travel

Aleading travel journalist depicts and predicts the good, the bad, and the uglyabout the future of travel — and how we can transcend the complications of touristification, AI, and climate change in this latestaddition to the FUTURES Series.

In the future, tourists will strap on a VR headset that serves up information about the storefronts and cathedrals they pass, letting them ''see Paris'' without actually laying eyes on it. Instant-translation earbuds will mean we''ll never have to learn the words Donde esta la biblioteca? - and who needs a library or bookstore when Spanish-English dictionaries and guidebooks are obsolete? Meanwhile, thanks to AI, travelers will have an unprecedented fount of information at their disposal - but how much of it can be trusted? And is it really ''saving time'' if AI bots are sending everyone to stand in line at already-overrun tourist spots? In the coming years, more cities and countries will take drastic measures to combat not only a flood of tourists but of a growing worldwide workforce of ''location-independent professionals,'' enacting congestion pricing and car-free zones, and grounding budget airlines such as Ryanair (or ''Ruinair,'' as climate activists have dubbed it) in favour of zero-emission, hydrogen-fuelled train networks. In The Future of Travel, award-winning food and travel writer Daniel Maurer - himself a veteran globetrotter - will predict epic tugs-of-war between the travellers and the locals and what happens when technology allows entire new classes of travellers to move - as far as they can, as much as they can.