It might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but in San Francisco taxis are ferrying people around town – without a driver. The first company to receive a permit for the robo-cab pilot programme was Cruise, with the public initially able to hail rides in the evenings. In December 2022, second company Waymo was green-lit to roll out their services across the entire city and operate all hours of the day. The driverless taxis, which use machine learning, cameras and radar to navigate their way around, are now accepting rides in Austin and Phoenix too.
Dreaming of a trip across the pond? A ground-breaking new supersonic jet could slash the time it’ll take passengers to hop across the Atlantic. The novel aircraft – Spike S-512 Supersonic Business Jet – is pioneered by Spike Aerospace and will see travellers reach New York from London in just three hours.
But Spike Aerospace isn't the only innovator vying for super-speedy air travel. European start-up Destinus, with its proposed hypersonic service, looks to connect Frankfurt to Sydney in four hours and 15 minutes and Memphis to Dubai in three-and-a-half hours.
In 2019, a test flight saw a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner travel direct from London’s Heathrow Airport to Sydney in 19 hours and 19 minutes. A flight from New York to Sydney, with a journey time of 19 hours 16 minutes, was also trialled that year. In 2019, the plans were halted due to COVID-19 but Qantas announced in May 2022 that direct services are set to link Sydney and Melbourne to New York and London by late 2025.
It’s estimated that the aviation industry accounts for around 2% of all global human-induced CO2 emissions and some savvy companies are dreaming up ways to combat the problem. Israeli company Eviation has created the world’s first all-electric passenger plane, Alice: the award-winning aircraft operates on a battery and produces zero emissions.
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Designed for short-haul journeys, Alice can travel some 650 miles (1,046km) on a single battery charge at a speed of 240 knots. She’s got room for nine passengers in her comfy cabin (pictured), and a batch of the aircraft has already been sold to US carrier Cape Air. This comes as Scandinavian countries Norway and Sweden have pledged to run all short-haul flights with electric airliners by 2040. Watch this space…
Best of all, though, is the bed, which is tipped as one of the largest in the air. In the Studio, a privacy door hides a comfy seat and an adjoining sofa that switches out into a generous lie-flat bed. There’s also a plush Tuft & Needle mattress and plenty of mod cons, from wireless charging to a 22-inch TV screen. The Mint Studio launched in 2021 and is available on all flights to and from London, as well as selected JFK-LA flights.
Air New Zealand is another carrier making sure passengers have a good night’s sleep. The airline has revealed its Skynests: six “sleep pods” with a bunk-bed design that allows economy travellers on select planes to lie flat and get some shut-eye. Inspired by capsule hotels, they’re more than six feet (2m) long and 58cm (23in) wide and they come with creature comforts like ear plugs, a reading light, a privacy curtain and bedding.
For a four-hour snooze in the pod, economy-class passengers will need to pay NZ$400-$600 (£199-£299/US$249-$374) on top of their flight ticket and a pre-book a slot for some rest en route before returning to their seat. It comes as the airline gears up to launch a super-long-haul flight from Auckland to New York, with a journey time of 17 hours 40 minutes. The unique pods will be available from September 2024 and are set to be installed on Air New Zealand's new Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
From green boltholes to robotic breaks: smart hotels are big business and there are plenty of new kids on the block. Among them is the Leyeju Smart Hotel (pictured), which has locations across China. Just two staff members are employed at each hotel, purely for emergencies – the rest is covered by robots, who even guide guests straight to their room. Check-in is via facial recognition and everything from lights to temperature is controlled automatically.
US hotels are embracing robotics too. You’ll spot adorable robot YO2D2 flitting about YOTEL Boston, entertaining travellers and performing basic customer services. YO2D2 brings towels and linens to guest rooms, delivers purchases and summons lifts. He’s available for selfies too.
It’s estimated that there are some 600,000 vegans in the UK and plant-based guests at the swanky Hilton London Bankside are well catered for. Not just in the restaurant, either. Design company Bompas & Parr created what’s tipped as the world’s first entirely vegan suite at the hotel and it opened to guests in 2019.
The key material in the suite is Pinatex, a ‘leather’ made with pineapple leaf fibres, which is used for the room’s furniture. There are no feathers in the pillows, either – instead they’re plumped up with things like buckwheat hulls and tree fibres – and the rugs are made from cotton rather than wool. Of course, the drinks in the mini-bar and the toiletries in the bathroom are 100% vegan too. The suite is available to book now.
Hilton's digital offering is top notch and its hi-tech amenities are centred around the Hilton Honors app. Using the app, guests can now not only check in online, but choose their very own hotel room, just like you would an aeroplane seat. Once you've entered your arrival time, you can peruse a floor plan and select your chosen location. When your trip's up, you can check out digitally too.
Imagine a hotel that can simply be picked up and moved on to a new location: that’s the USP of the Flying Nest, the brainchild of French hospitality group Accor. Slick guestrooms are housed within converted marine containers that can be shifted and assembled at the drop of a hat. So far the hotel has popped up at a beach, a festival and a ski resort in the French Alps.
The nomadic hotel rooms have plenty of home comforts, too: there’s air conditioning, Wi-Fi, cosy linens and a private bathroom. They’ve also got a green focus, with LED lighting, eco-friendly paint and sustainable energy solutions like greywater recycling.
When the pandemic shuttered museums, galleries and attractions around the world, one British gallery in particular revolutionised a way of keeping its art accessible to visitors. Hastings Contemporary, a gallery in East Sussex, introduced virtual tours led by a video-conferencing bot that allowed visitors to explore the gallery from the comfort of home. It's seen here before a work by Quentin Blake.
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Now, in partnership with the Accentuate Programme and Robotics For Good C.I.C., Hastings Contemporary is keeping the scheme going beyond lockdown to give art-lovers who can't travel to the gallery the chance to still enjoy its exhibitions. Using Robot Tours to open up its collection, as well as facilitate equal opportunities to those who can only join in with activities remotely, Hastings Contemporary is a pioneer of telepresence robot technology applied in this way.
Long-distance bus travel may not sound like a thing of luxury, but California company Cabin is aiming to "completely reinvent the bus as we know it". Cabin's vehicle – tipped as the "dream machine" – sits somewhere between a bus and a luxury hotel, with comfy sleeper cabins complete with cosy linens, ambient lighting and little touches like slippers.
Drivers take specific routes to make for a smooth journey and minimise (literal and figurative) bumps in the road. There's also special bump-cancelling technology that senses uneven road surfaces and moves beds up and down accordingly to control unwanted "turbulence". Cabin vehicles can take you wine tasting in Santa Ynez, to the beach in Ventura or to Monterey Bay for kayaking and potential otter encounters.
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Inside cabins are a money-saver on cruises, but that means you miss out on the sweeping ocean views afforded by rooms with a balcony. Royal Caribbean has just the solution. Stretching right from floor to ceiling, its high-definition "virtual balconies" show real-time footage of the sea outside, with sound effects thrown in for good measure. This snap shows a virtual balcony in action on Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas.
Carnival Corporation, a cruise company with subsidiaries including Princess Cruises, Seabourn and Holland America, has won awards for its Ocean Medallion. The tiny wearable device tracks your location onboard, meaning you can order a drink from anywhere, and also check your itinerary and find your way through the ship. It even recognises you on your approach to your suite and opens the door automatically. Sensors are dotted across participating ships like Princess Cruises' Royal Princess (pictured).
If you’re dreaming of getting far off the grid, this might be just the place. Set in the Arctic wilds of Norway, Svart, designed by architecture firm Snøhetta, is tipped as the world’s very first energy-positive hotel. Solar panels line the venue’s sleek roof and, according to its creators, the hotel will reap enough solar energy to cover its operations and its construction too.
The sweeping circular design isn’t just for style points – it’s got a very specific function, too. Architects carefully mapped the solar radiation in this setting of peaks and water, and settled on this circular construction as a way to harvest as much of the sun’s energy as possible. Restaurants, terraces and its 99 rooms were all strategically placed to take advantage of this solar power too. The hotel aims to be entirely self-sufficient within five years of running: this includes water, electricity and farm-to-table food. It’s slated to open in 2024.
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Fancy a high-speed railway across Europe? Rail industry leaders plan to create a vast network of super-fast trains between every major city in the European Union. The new rail lines will make travel across Europe easier, quicker and greener, in a bid to encourage more passengers to turn away from air travel.
High-speed train travel is already hugely popular in cities like London, Brussels and Paris so the demand for a larger network is rapidly growing too. The current plan is to double high-speed train use by 2030 and triple current levels by 2050. In May 2023, Spanish rail operator Renfe started the process of applying to operate in Portugal, with dreams of high-speed links from Lisbon to Madrid and Galicia.
The world's fastest and most energy-efficient electric ship, the Candela P-12 Shuttle, will be water-born by the end of 2023, ready to begin its pilot as one of Stockholm's main public transport routes in 2024. Promising to reduce emissions and slash commuting times by half, the 'flying' ferry has three carbon fibre wings that extend from underneath its hull, raising the ship above the water to reduce drag (and seasickness). The futuristic ferries can carry 30 passengers and will initially travel from the Stockholm suburb of Ekerö to the city centre in 25 minutes.
Since the hydrofoil Candela P-12 Shuttle creates almost zero wake and so avoids wave damage to other vessels or sensitive shorelines, it has been granted permission to travel at faster speeds of 30 knots. Its wake-free capabilities also make it an attractive mode of transport for cities such as Venice, which has declared a "macro emergency" due to the damaging impact of boat wakes on its fragile buildings.
Germany is now home to the world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains – with future plans to expand into northern Italy and France. This emission-free mobility has replaced diesel trains on its debut route in Lower Saxony and, at the end of 2022, a fleet of 27 trains was also rolled out in Frankfurt. Pictured here is one of the Coradia iLint trains on a trial run in France in September 2021.
First presented at Berlin's InnoTrans 2016, the regional trains are an environmentally-friendly solution. Their range of 621 miles (1,000km) means they can run on a single tank of hydrogen for one day. Better still, they produce zero emissions and emit only a low noise.
Love camping but find the idea of being on land a bit limited? This is where a unique new vessel, the Caracat, comes in. A luxury caravan that transforms into a catamaran invites campers to stay on land or lake, and is available to order now from Cara-Cat.com. There are three models to choose from, starting at £112,900 ($129k) and reaching £260,500 ($298k), all fitted with a rechargeable electric motor. It'll need to be towed on land, of course, but once you take to the water, 'pontoons' extend outwards increasing the width of the Caracat for stability while cruising.
In April 2023, Expedia announced it would be partnering with OpenAI’s notorious bot ChatGPT to enhance its travel-planning tools. By going onto the Expedia app, customers can now start a conversation with ChatGPT to get recommendations on destinations, transport links and hotels; the latter are automatically favourited by the bot ready for the user to refer to again later.
Expedia is the latest big name to adopt sophisticated AI as part of its functionality; its rival Kayak is using ChatGPT to assist travellers too. As reported in the New York Times, travel agencies are also incorporating ChatGPT into their trip-planning research, saying it can save them legwork and speed up their processes. While the capabilities of ChatGPT can help make the lives of travel agents and tour operators easier in the short-term, it’s also feared by some that AI may eventually come to replace those industries altogether.
In May 2023, ride-hailing app Uber unveiled a brand-new feature for UK users allowing them to book flights directly through the Uber portal this summer. This means that travellers will be able to book end-to-end travel for both domestic and international trips, with cars, coaches, boats, trains and now planes at their disposal on the Uber app. The new flight-booking functionality is powered by online travel agent Hopper, with focus on a UK pilot first before committing to roll-outs in other countries.