The Road Ahead: Predictions for the Future of Tourism
In a world where the boundaries between work and leisure are becoming increasingly blurred, and technology continues to reshape our travel experiences, one individual stands at the forefront of understanding the profound shifts in the tourism and hospitality industry.
Meet Jeff Yang, the Research Director and Head of the Digital Intelligence Lab at the Institute for the Future (IFTF), whose deep insights and outlook have earned him a prominent place in the world of digital intelligence.
In this interview, we engage Jeff in a discussion about the future of tourism and hospitality, as well as the most significant global trends shaping the industry. From the impact of emerging technologies like VR, AR/XR, AI-driven customization, and virtual assistants to the evolving dynamics of travel in an era marked by environmental challenges and changing consumer preferences, Jeff offers a comprehensive perspective on what lies ahead.
How do you envision the future of tourism and hospitality, and based on your research, what are the most significant global trends shaping this future and how will they redefine the way we travel and experience the world?
I'll answer the second half of this question first. The world is in many ways shrinking: Technology, both in digital media and in transportation, is making it easier to access and experience farther and more remote places. We can visit Antarctica in virtual reality! Space tourism is now possible!
But at the same time, the growing uncertainty of the environment due to climate change and continuing variability in the cost of consumable resources like fuel has ironically made physical travel more vulnerable and volatile. We all have experienced the new challenges of air travel, with constant delays and interruptions, canceled flights, rising prices and diminished comfort. These are only going to continue, and get worse, as climate change makes weather more variable and intense.
So i think the reality is that travel will be getting more seasonal. Local and regional travel (accessible via ground-based transport) will see a resurgence, including to places that aren't traditionally tourism destinations.
We are seeing a big trend in people "working from anywhere" and the rise of "Zoom towns" in rural areas, populated by remote workers. All of this means that people are starting to see the value of less purpose-built-for-tourism destinations -- places that may be cheaper, more untouched and more authentic.
At the same time, there is going to be a greater desire for event-focused travel, targeting experiences that are unique and high demand. This includes sporting and entertainment events, like the World Cup, the Olympics, and major concerts like K-Pop idol tours, Beyonce and Taylor Swift, all of whom have seen people actually follow along with their tours, attending concerts in multiple cities. People want the experiential bump that comes with being physically present for extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime events. But they will probably reduce their travel to more mundane tourist destinations as a result, or -- as noted above -- pivot to local / regional travel, or even VR-based proxy immersion, if the right combination of technologies and content can finally bring virtual reality fully mainstream.
Can you elaborate on the impact of emerging technologies like VR, AR/XR, AI-driven customization, and virtual assistants on the hospitality experience? How will these innovations reshape the way travelers engage with destinations and services?
One key way that VR is already being used is "travel tasting": Getting an advance sneak preview at a destination and its culture before investing in the cost and effort of traveling there. AR/XR, meanwhile, has not quite landed the plane on the promise of providing data overlays on every destination...it turns out that people want their in-person experiences a little less mediated, and experiments like Google Glass have generated ridicule so far. But one thing that is successfully generating some traction is gamified tourism, with AR/XR components -- after the mainstreaming of Pokemon Go, people are a little more willing to use their phones as a "window on the world" if there's some incentive, like game rewards.
AR-based scavenger hunts for tourists are in many major cities now. And using AR to drive access to secret locations / events / speakeasy-style venues also has gotten increasingly popular.
AI customization of itineraries is still a bit of a work in progress, simply because we are only just seeing the rise of AI that has more real-time access to the world, rather than being limited to what it was trained on. Microsoft's Bing has been a first-mover here, and it's easy to conceive of a world where one could design entire holidays by verbal prompt, with AI doing everything from booking potential travel and lodging to generating a whole custom guidebook -- pictures, text and all -- to go along with the trip.
Virtual assistants have faded a bit in relevance, in part because they. haven't yet been given full access to robust AI like ChatGPT; Siri and Alexa feel behind the curve as a result. But as AI + VA convergence occurs, virtual assistants could end up being an "angel on your shoulder" throughout your journey, making recommendations, acting as a constantly present concierge, and even doing real-time translation into other languages with people native to the destination.
How have your personal experiences, including anecdotes and lessons from your travels around the world, informed your insights into the future of tourism and hospitality?
As a journalist, author, researcher and consultant, I have traveled constantly across my career, and have been fortunate to frequently do so around the time of major cultural shifts. I was in Hong Kong for the "handover" to Mainland China, accompanying martial arts legend Jackie Chan, as I was cowriting his memoirs at the time.
I traveled in China in the early Eighties, before it fully opened, and have trekked in Tanzania and Kenya, and across Latin America and Southeast Asia. What I'm consistently reminded of in my travels is that at the end of the day, tourism is about experiences, and hospitality is about people. We travel the world to collect memories; we visit communities and stay at venues to make connections, sometimes temporary, and sometimes lifelong.
Can you share some specific examples from your travels where you witnessed innovative approaches or standout experiences that exemplify the direction the hospitality industry is headed?
In Hong Kong in the 1990s, I experienced a meal that to this day has not been surpassed, not because it was the most delicious or the most filling (and certainly it wasn't the cheapest!). A chef named Margaret Xu had opened up a "private kitchen" in the New Territories, making it available one a day for only 12 people, who would have to ride a chartered boat to an island where her house was situated, arriving in the morning for a dinner meal. The reason why it was such an all day experience was that Chef Xu's meals were prepared solely from ingredients that could be harvested or were available in the late 18th century of China, and she only used tools that she'd found and refurbished from that era to make them. The 12 participants would have to be part of the foraging, harvesting, butchering, grinding, and every other step of the meal. We ground soybeans and made fresh tofu using a millstone that she'd found at an abandoned mill. We helped to catch chickens and watched (well, some of us did) as she expertly killed them, then helped to pluck them of feathers after they'd been seethed in hot water. We gathered herbs and produce and vegetables, all grown in her fields or taken from the nearby wilds, and we helped to draw soy sauce and fish sauce that she had fermented along with pickles that she'd made months before and buried.
Then as she served each dish, Chef Xu told the story of how she found each implement, each plate and serving piece, stories that were sometimes funny and sometimes adventurous, but all interesting. We finished the meal by candlelight, helped to clean up by oil lamp, and were brought back by the same boat to the mainland.
It was a unique experience that i remember distinctly to this day, and that sealed for me the fact that we travel to create lasting memories. Whatever technology may arise, this will always be true.
The blurring of lines between work and personal time is becoming more prevalent in today's society. How do you anticipate this trend will impact the hospitality industry, and how can businesses adapt to cater to the needs of future travelers who may blend leisure and work during their trips?
Businesses need to adapt to the reality that we are more willing to allow our work to permeate our play than ever. This has especially been the case post-Covid, when the lockdown made it so our work and our home and our play lives all converged. That's now normal. But that doesn't mean people don't want to "protect" time for themselves.
Working should be an option -- made possible with fast Internet access, respect for privacy, and separate spaces for people to retreat to from family or staff to be productive. But it should not be an expectation.
The thing that makes this blended lifestyle survivable is that we can still when we want to wall off our personal time, with our loved ones, whether that be meals, spa time or sleep. Find out when people don't want to be disturbed and make that inviolable. But when people want to get work done, accept that that may be taking place anywhere, on any time zone, and provide them with that ability to do so, without disturbing others.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of tourism and hospitality? What possibilities do you envision, and what advice would you offer to industry leaders looking to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving landscape?
I think that tourism is increasingly going to be about experiences and memories. Finding ways to create a long tail on travel -- capturing and curating images and video, offering nostalgic reminders on anniversaries of visits, keeping connections with people met during journeys fresh, and giving guests a sense that they are always "present" in past travel and welcome to renew it -- these won't be optional as people are increasingly seeking to revisit their experiences archivally, and to double-down on good experiences.
This sense that travel and hospitality companies are not just service providers but collaborative storytellers, helping guests to create memorable narratives about their experiences, and preserving those narratives for them -- that's already the norm in the world of Instagram and influencer-driven travel. But it's going to be even more important in the future as Gen Z, a generation that has grown up on screens and fully mobile, with the Internet woven into their bones, seek to make and preserve experiences and social contacts for a full adult lifetime.
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