Industry pros share visions of the future of travel in 2050
From cruise ship holodecks to spas on Mars, "reluctant futurist" Henry Coutinho-Mason uses generative AI to turn crowdsourced sketches into technicolour visions of the future of travel. Jenny Southan reports
At a recent Globetrender event at immersive VR gaming facility Sandbox London, Henry Coutinho-Mason invited a room full of cross-industry travel professionals to use his VisuAIse Futures platform to present a future travel product or experience from 2050.
After handing out paper and pencils, participants had a couple of minutes to draw and idea and then scan a QR code on the screen to upload their sketch. Using generative AI, the platform then turned each drawing into a hyper-real image, bringing to life otherwise intangible ideas.
The exercise was fun, surprising and effective. Coutinho-Mason explains why: "So much of the narrative around AI is about automation and efficiency. But we shouldn't overlook its power to help people be more creative too. To demonstrate this, I ran my VisuAIse Futures interactive creative experience – using AI to turn people's quick sketches on future travel experiences into richer digital images.
"We saw some great ideas – a lot of robot butlers, VR and teleportation. But there were also some really fascinating and provocative ideas. What if we could use VR to travel 'back in time', and experience places as they were before overtourism? What if sleep pods could somehow compress eight hours of REM sleep into a 30-minute nap? What if we could elevate low-lying, at-risk islands in the Indian Ocean?
"And while it was a bit of light-hearted fun – it was also a powerful reminder that people will still have a big role to play when it comes to creating the future normal of travel!"
Visions of the future of travel - by industry experts
Spa day on Mars



Sleep pod – sleep for 30 minutes but have the effects of eight hours REM sleep


Hologram clone to allow me to be in several places at once






