Travel Technology & AI – Travelling Man

How Travel Quietly Moved from the Metaverse to Digitally Augmented Travel

John Boulding — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 15:55:55 +0000

How Travel Quietly Moved from the Metaverse to Digitally Augmented Travel

Last week, Paul Richer invited me to open TTI’s Autumn Conference with a keynote on The Metaverse of Travel. In preparing for it, I found myself returning to a deceptively simple question: whatever happened to the metaverse?

It was not meant dismissively. Only a few years ago, the metaverse was being presented as the future of almost everything: how we would work, shop, meet, entertain ourselves and, inevitably, how we might travel. Yet the word itself seems to have faded almost as quickly as it entered mainstream business thinking.

What became increasingly clear to me, though, was that travel had not rejected the technology. Quite the opposite. Many of the capabilities that once sat beneath the metaverse umbrella have continued to develop at considerable pace: VR and AR, spatial computing, digital twins, wearables, AI, real-time translation, immersive audio, computer vision and increasingly intelligent mobility.

What changed was not so much the technology as what travellers and travel businesses wanted it to do. And that is where the more interesting story begins.

Covid gave virtual travel a purpose

The timing of the original metaverse enthusiasm matters. Covid did not invent virtual tourism, but it gave it unusual relevance. For a period, physical travel simply stopped. Airports emptied, museums and attractions closed, guides lost their groups and destinations lost their visitors.

The industry responded creatively. Museums opened virtual doors. Guides livestreamed walks through cities. Destinations experimented with 360-degree content. VR previews and remote cultural experiences offered people a connection with places they could no longer physically reach.

These experiences had genuine value, but largely because they were solving an extraordinary problem. Virtual travel was not necessarily better than travel. It was better than no travel.

As remote working, online events and digital access became normalised, it was understandable that some began to extrapolate from that exceptional period. Facebook became Meta in 2021, investment accelerated and the idea of persistent virtual worlds moved rapidly from technology circles into mainstream business thinking.

For travel, the proposition was seductive. Perhaps digital experience was not simply what we did while we could not travel. Perhaps it could become an increasingly important substitute for travelling at all.

And then the world reopened.

Seeing somewhere was never the same as being somewhere

People travelled again, and they did so with remarkable enthusiasm. By 2024, international tourism had virtually returned to pre-pandemic levels. We even developed a term for some of the pent-up demand: “revenge travel”.

That rebound told us something important. If virtual experiences were going to become a meaningful substitute for travel at scale, we might reasonably have expected to see some evidence of that once physical travel became possible again. Instead, consumers demonstrated just how strongly they still valued being somewhere.

I spent many decades in escorted touring, and one thing that experience teaches you is that travel is never simply a sequence of sights. An itinerary can look perfect on paper and still fail on the road because the experience depends on timing, atmosphere, scale, weather, food, local knowledge, human interaction and a degree of serendipity.

Often, the moments people remember most are not the famous landmarks at all, but a meal, a conversation, an unexpected view or a guide who knows when to tell the story and when to let the place speak for itself.

Digital can show. Travel allows people to be there.

That is why I think the original travel proposition around the metaverse began to lose some of its force. The technologies were not necessarily wrong. We were asking them the wrong question.

Instead of asking whether technology could replace travel, the more useful question became: how can technology make travel better?

From virtual substitution to digitally augmented travel

Once we make that shift, the picture looks very different. VR can inspire and preview. AI can personalise. Real-time translation can remove language barriers. Smart glasses and spatial audio can provide information without continually pulling the visitor back towards a phone screen. Digital twins can help destinations understand movement, capacity and congestion. Intelligent mobility can make journeys more responsive and increasingly personalised.

Rather than disappearing into a virtual destination, the traveller remains in the real one.

I find it useful to think of this emerging phase as digitally augmented travel. I do not mean augmented reality in the narrow technical sense, but something broader.

Digitally augmented travel is the use of technology to add useful layers of meaning, language, navigation, access, interpretation, personalisation and intelligence around a real-world journey, while preserving the physical place and human interaction at its core.

That final point matters. Digitally augmented travel is not inherently about removing people from tourism. Visitors still meet local people. They may still be guided by a real guide, hosted by a real resident, advised by a real travel professional or welcomed by someone who knows the destination far better than any algorithm.

Technology can enable those relationships rather than eliminate them. Real-time translation can help a guide communicate with more visitors. AI-supported interpretation can answer questions around prepared content. Accessibility tools can help people experience places that previously presented barriers. Location-aware systems can provide context at exactly the moment it becomes useful.

The technology becomes a layer around the physical and human experience, rather than a replacement for it.

Less screen, more place

There is an interesting paradox in all this. For much of the past 15 years, travel technology has made journeys easier while simultaneously pulling more of our attention towards the smartphone. We navigate through it, buy tickets through it, translate with it, photograph with it, search through it and increasingly experience parts of a destination through a six-inch screen.

The next generation of technology may begin to reverse some of that. Micro devices, intelligent audio, smart glasses, spatial interfaces and real-time interpretation could allow technology to become less intrusive rather than more. The visitor may receive more information while spending less time looking at a device.

Through my work with Vox, I see this particularly clearly in guiding, interpretation and multilingual communication. The basic requirement has not changed. People want to understand where they are and what they are seeing. What is changing is how intelligently, personally and unobtrusively that understanding can be delivered.

Generative AI takes this another step. Traditional interpretation is generally fixed: someone writes the guidebook, records the audio guide or creates the museum panel, and the visitor receives what has already been prepared.

AI introduces the possibility of conversation. A visitor might ask why a building is important, what was happening elsewhere at the same time, how to explain something to a ten-year-old, or what most visitors miss.

The place has not changed. The visitor has not left it. But the layer of understanding around it can become personalised, responsive and multilingual.

The journey itself is becoming more intelligent

This change does not begin when somebody arrives at the destination. Increasingly, technology touches the entire visitor journey.

AI is already reshaping inspiration and planning. Conversational search allows travellers to describe what they want in ways that conventional search boxes never really permitted. Recommendation systems can become more contextual. Products can be compared and assembled around preferences rather than rigid categories.

And this raises another interesting question for travel businesses. For decades, one of the central marketing challenges has been: how well do we understand our customer?

Increasingly, we may also need to ask: how well can our customer’s technology understand us?

The traveller remains human, but the first point of discovery may increasingly be an AI agent searching, comparing and interpreting products on their behalf. That does not automatically mean the demise of brands, travel agents, resellers or intermediaries. Distribution has rarely evolved quite that neatly.

Consumers will continue to value trust, reassurance, aggregation, inspiration and the confidence that somebody will be there when something goes wrong. But businesses may increasingly need to communicate simultaneously with two audiences: the human traveller and the technology acting on their behalf.

Product information, availability, pricing, terms, relevance and reputation therefore need to be understandable not only to people but increasingly to machines. That has potentially profound implications for brand and distribution.

The brand still needs to mean something to the traveller. But it may also need to be sufficiently clear, trusted and machine-readable to be surfaced by the traveller’s AI.

That is a new form of discoverability.

Personalisation could move from luxury to mainstream

Mobility may be another important part of this story.

Traditionally, sightseeing economics have favoured groups. A coach carrying 40 people along a predetermined itinerary is considerably easier to make economical than providing 40 individually tailored journeys.

Private touring has always offered something different. A couple, family or individual can determine where they go, when they stop, what interests them and how long they stay. But that flexibility has generally carried a premium and has therefore been associated particularly with luxury and bespoke travel.

One point made particularly well by Alex Bainbridge at TTI was that autonomous mobility could begin to change those economics.

If smaller autonomous vehicles can cost-effectively serve couples, families and eventually individuals, highly personalised itineraries may become scalable in ways that were previously difficult. Add AI planning, contextual interpretation, live traffic and visitor-flow information, multilingual guidance and the ability to alter the itinerary dynamically, and the significance is no longer simply that nobody is driving the vehicle.

A family might leave its hotel with an itinerary created around its own interests, alter it during the day, spend longer somewhere that particularly appeals, skip somewhere that does not, and receive interpretation throughout in its own language.

The more interesting possibility is that a level of personalisation once associated mainly with expensive bespoke travel could become available to a much wider market.

Mobility itself begins to become part of the experience.

That does not mean autonomous vehicles will automatically eliminate tour operators, resellers or intermediaries. The eventual distribution model is much less certain. But they could change the economics of how personalised sightseeing is delivered, which in itself would be a significant shift.

Digital twins are moving closer to the visitor

Digital twins illustrate the same convergence from another direction.

The term is already used quite broadly, but at its most established it refers to data-connected representations of physical systems: airports, venues, attractions or cities that help operators understand passenger flows, congestion, capacity, staffing and different scenarios.

Increasingly, however, digital representations also have a consumer role. Visitors can explore hotels, attractions, venues and destinations before travelling. Over time, those two worlds may begin to meet.

A destination that understands what is happening in real time can potentially use that intelligence not simply to improve its own operations, but to improve the visitor’s experience too. Where is it busy? What is accessible? What has changed? What might be more suitable for this particular visitor at this moment? Where should they go next?

Again, the direction is the same. Digital intelligence is being brought into the real journey.

Technology still has to earn its place

There is, however, a danger in all discussion of emerging technology. Travel has never suffered from a shortage of clever solutions looking for problems to solve, and operators, attractions and destinations already work with finite budgets, limited management bandwidth and considerable operational complexity.

Technology therefore has to earn its place. My own filter is fairly simple: does it improve the visitor experience, remove friction, improve understanding, help manage the destination better, or create genuine commercial value?

If the answer is none of those things, the technology may still be impressive, but it is probably not yet particularly useful.

That, perhaps, is one of the biggest differences between the metaverse moment and where we find ourselves today. The metaverse conversation was dominated by possibility. The next phase feels increasingly governed by utility.

Perhaps the world simply moved on

So what happened to the metaverse?

Perhaps it did not disappear at all. The grand vision fragmented, some of the hype faded and some of the terminology changed. Technologies that had once been packaged together began evolving independently, finding more practical applications and responding more closely to what travellers and travel businesses actually wanted.

Travel, almost quietly, moved with them.

That is why I think the idea of digitally augmented travel is useful. It describes a future that does not require us to choose between technology and the physical world, or between digital intelligence and human interaction. Quite the opposite.

The opportunity is to use technology to make the real world easier to navigate, more accessible, more understandable, more personal and ultimately more rewarding.

Travel’s greatest asset has always been reality: its people, places, cultures, stories and unpredictability. The future is not about replacing those things. It is about giving travellers better ways to experience them.

The metaverse asked us to enter a digital world.

Digitally augmented travel brings digital intelligence into the real one.

Acknowledgements

This article developed from my opening keynote, A Whole New World, delivered at the TTI Autumn Conference in London in September 2026. My thanks to Paul Richer for inviting me to explore the theme, and to fellow speakers Jay Scott-Nichols, Ric Corbett, Alex Bainbridge and Alex Hurd for the wider discussion and ideas shared during the morning.

Particular thanks to Alex Bainbridge for his perspective on autonomous mobility and the potential for smaller, highly personalised sightseeing journeys to become more economically scalable.

Some of the supporting visuals used in this article were created with the assistance of generative AI and then edited and selected to support the themes discussed.

AI Infrastructure: Why Britain’s Ambition Needs Real-World Connectivity

John Boulding — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:38:42 +0000

AI Ambition Needs Real-World Infrastructure

AI infrastructure is now central to Britain’s economic ambition. On 8 June 2026, the Prime Minister used London Tech Week to set out a bold vision for Britain’s role in artificial intelligence. The speech included a new strategy to develop sovereign compute capability, a commitment of around £400 million to purchase specialist AI chips, and plans to scale the government’s AI compute testbed into a national capability.

AI infrastructure is now an economic priority

That ambition should be welcomed. Britain should want to be a serious player in AI. It should back innovators, attract investment, build sovereign capability and ensure that the benefits of technology are felt well beyond the usual centres of influence.

But one line in the speech stood out to me above all others: “What matters is whether Britain is ready for it.”

That is exactly the right question, because readiness is not only about AI models, chips, data centres, skills programmes or investment capital. It is also about the practical, everyday infrastructure that allows digital innovation to work in the real world.

Why real-world connectivity matters

Because the AI economy will not exist only in laboratories, government departments or controlled test environments. It will exist in railway stations, airports, hotels, hospitals, museums, visitor attractions, trade shows, conference centres, high streets, city centres, factories, schools and small businesses. It will exist wherever people actually live, work, travel, meet and trade.

That is where the less glamorous question of connectivity becomes so important.

Anyone who has exhibited at a major trade show will recognise the issue. You arrive with your devices, screens, apps, payment systems, presentations and live demonstrations ready to go. Then thousands of people gather under one roof, all using phones, tablets, laptops, scanners, messaging tools, cloud platforms and digital sales systems at the same time. Suddenly, the thing everyone depends on becomes the thing no one can fully rely on.

This is not usually the fault of one venue or one organiser. Many major venues have invested heavily in digital infrastructure, and event organisers know perfectly well how critical connectivity has become. The challenge is broader than that. The demands being placed on public, private and venue-based networks are rising faster than the lived experience of reliability.

And this is not just a trade show problem. It is a business problem.

It affects payments. It affects ticketing. It affects live translation. It affects visitor information. It affects logistics. It affects customer service. It affects productivity. It affects how confidently businesses can demonstrate, sell and deliver technology in front of customers.

Why the visitor economy depends on reliable AI infrastructure

In tourism and the visitor economy, this matters enormously. The future of the sector will be shaped by digital tickets, dynamic itinerary tools, AI-assisted guidance, multilingual content, real-time information, smart crowd management, mobile payments, location-aware services and personalised visitor experiences. But all of these depend on one very basic assumption: that people can stay connected when and where it matters.

The same is true on the move. Ofcom’s recent research into rail connectivity found that mobile performance was poor on between 58% and 83% of tests carried out on trains, depending on the network. On-board Wi-Fi performed well in only 1% of tests. For anyone who regularly travels by train and tries to work, join a call, send a file or simply stay connected, this will not come as a great surprise.

The wider picture is more balanced. Ofcom’s Spring 2026 Connected Nations update shows real progress. Full fibre is now available to 82% of UK homes, gigabit-capable broadband reaches 89%, and 5G coverage continues to expand. Overall 5G coverage outside premises now ranges from 76% to 94% by mobile network operator.

Coverage statistics are not the same as confidence

So the point is not that nothing is happening. Clearly, investment is being made and progress is visible.

The point is that coverage statistics and real-world confidence are not always the same thing.

A map may show coverage. A contract may promise speed. A phone may display a 5G symbol. But the practical question for businesses and consumers is simpler: does it work reliably when I need it?

That question matters more than ever because the direction of travel is clear. We are moving towards an economy in which more services are digital by default, more experiences are app-enabled, more business tools are cloud-based, and more innovation depends on real-time access to data.

AI will only intensify that dependency.

AI ambition depends on practical foundations

If Britain wants to lead in AI, it must also lead in the practical infrastructure that allows AI to be used. That means mobile networks that work properly in crowded places. It means better connectivity on trains. It means resilient Wi-Fi in venues. It means better indoor coverage in large buildings. It means planning systems that allow essential telecoms infrastructure to be upgraded at pace.

It also means landlords, developers, operators, local authorities, government and telecoms companies treating connectivity as economic infrastructure, not as a nice-to-have utility.

Ofcom has called for a national effort involving mobile companies, local authorities, government, building developers, major landlords and Ofcom itself to improve the quality and reliability of mobile service across the country. That joined-up approach is exactly what is needed.

The phasing out of older networks adds to the urgency. Ofcom says 3G mobile networks are now switched off, while 2G networks are gradually being switched off and will be switched off by 2033 at the latest. That transition may be necessary, but it also raises the stakes for dependable 4G and 5G coverage.

The future only works if we can stay connected

AI ambition is exciting. It should be welcomed. But the real test will not be whether Britain can make bold announcements about the future. It will be whether businesses, workers, visitors and consumers can feel the benefit of that future in everyday life.

The next generation of technology will not succeed on ambition alone. It will succeed when the foundations beneath it are strong enough to support it.

So yes, let us invest in AI. Let us back British innovators. Let us build sovereign capability. Let us train people for the jobs and opportunities ahead.

But let us also remember the simple, practical truth behind all of this.

The future only works if we can stay connected.

Sources:

AI in Travel: We Need Bridges, Not Walls

John Boulding — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:04:08 +0000

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how travel is planned and delivered. The real question is whether AI in travel is being used to build bridges between people and experiences, or quietly creating new walls.

Artificial intelligence has moved very quickly from curiosity to infrastructure in travel. It now sits behind everything from trip inspiration and booking flows to in-destination support and on-the-ground delivery. The opportunity is not simply to adopt more technology, but to use it in ways that build bridges between people and places, rather than putting new layers in the way of meaningful experience.

AI has clear potential to improve travel experiences. It can remove friction, widen access and help organisations operate more efficiently. But as with any wave of innovation in tourism, the value lies less in the technology itself and more in how thoughtfully it is applied.

The question is not whether AI will shape travel. It already is.

Where AI in travel is genuinely helping is in areas where complexity and scale have traditionally been hard to manage. Trip planning tools can now help travellers explore options in ways that feel more intuitive and personal. Customer support is becoming faster and more accessible, particularly across languages and time zones. On the ground, AI is beginning to support interpretation, wayfinding and real-time information in ways that were previously labour-intensive or inconsistent.

These developments matter because travel is inherently human and inherently complex. People move across borders, cultures and languages. They arrive with expectations, uncertainty and a desire to understand what they are seeing and experiencing. Anything that reduces friction in that moment has the potential to improve the quality of the experience.

One area where AI is making a particularly interesting contribution is in language access. Language has always been one of travel’s quiet barriers. It limits engagement, shapes confidence and, at times, determines whether a visitor feels included or merely present. Real-time translation tools are beginning to change that dynamic, allowing people to participate more fully in guided experiences, museum visits and cultural encounters.

There are already examples in the market of AI being used to support live multilingual guiding, including solutions developed by companies such as Vox Group with its integrated Vox Aura ecosystem for multilingual group guiding. These kinds of applications point to a future where language is less of a dividing line in shared experiences. Used well, they allow a single guide to communicate with an international group without fragmenting the experience or diluting the human element.

What matters here is not the brand or the device, but the intent behind the use of the technology.

AI works best in travel when it makes the experience feel simpler, calmer and more inclusive.

Where it is less successful is when it becomes the focus of attention rather than the support structure. Too many digital tools are introduced because they are possible, not because they are helpful. In those cases, technology risks becoming a layer that guests have to work around rather than a bridge that quietly supports them.

There is also a wider organisational challenge. AI is often adopted in silos, with marketing, operations and product teams experimenting independently. The result can be a fragmented experience for the guest, who encounters different digital behaviours at different points in the journey. Guests experience the journey as one continuous flow, even when organisations design it in parts.

For operators, destinations and cultural institutions, the real opportunity is to step back and ask a more basic question. Where does technology genuinely improve understanding, access and ease? Where does it reduce pressure on staff and guides rather than increase it? And where might it inadvertently distance people from the very experiences they came to have?

Innovation in travel should be judged by what it removes, not what it adds.

AI will undoubtedly become more embedded in the travel ecosystem. It will support planning, communication, interpretation and operations in ways that are still evolving. That is both inevitable and welcome. But it will not replace the fundamental drivers of memorable travel.

People remember how a place made them feel.
They remember who helped them make sense of it.
They remember moments of connection, clarity and surprise.

If AI helps create more of those moments, it is doing its job. If it gets in the way, it is simply another layer of noise in an already complex journey.

The challenge for the industry is not to adopt AI quickly, but to adopt it wisely.

Tourism Technology: Why Better Judgement Matters More Than More Tools

John Boulding — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 19:00:50 +0000

Tourism technology does not need more technology. It needs better judgement about where technology genuinely helps the experience rather than getting in the way.

Tourism has never lacked enthusiasm for technology. Over the years, the industry has embraced wave after wave of platforms, devices and systems promised as gamechangers. Some have delivered real value. Many have quietly disappeared.

Understanding the role of tourism technology is crucial for enhancing the travel experience.

The issue is rarely the technology itself. It is how and why it is applied.

At its best, technology supports the experience quietly and competently. At its worst, it becomes another layer people have to work around.

Too often, technology is introduced to impress, to signal modernity, or to satisfy an internal desire to innovate. In doing so, it risks creating distance between the guest and the experience rather than bringing them closer together.

Guests do not travel for technology. They travel for meaning, memory and connection.

This is particularly clear in guided and hosted experiences. A great guide, a well-told story, a shared sense of discovery. These are human moments. Technology should support them quietly, not compete with them.

Tourism has never lacked enthusiasm for technology. Over the years, the industry has embraced wave after wave of platforms, devices and tourism technology systems promised as gamechangers. Some have delivered real value. Many have quietly disappeared.

The issue is rarely the technology itself. It is how and why it is applied.

At its best, technology supports the experience quietly and competently. At its worst, it becomes another layer people have to work around.