Everything you know about exploring the world is about to change. Whether you’re navigating a foreign airport with the help of an anthropomorphic robot that speaks 19 languages or flying the preposterously comfortable Airbus A350 XWB to Helsinki and suffering zero jet lag, travel is getting undeniably better. Which is probably why, in 2015, we saw more than a billion people taking off for business, pleasure, or both. As we enter this second-wave golden age, we teamed up with our future-obsessed colleagues at Wired to forecast where the travel industry is headed as fierce competition (Airbnb, we see you), smart design (200-square-foot hotel rooms that don’t feel like 200 square feet), and even marketing gambits like Icelandair’s genius layover program continue to transform the way we see the world.

Of course the FUTURE involves ROBOTS. These five are Actually HELPFUL

The Future of GETTING

THERE is Almost Here

and WE’RE READY to Go

64 Condé Nast Traveler / 12.16 illustrations by PETER OUMANSK I

Call us biased, but we’re betting that virtual reality will never replace actually getting away. Still , these VR experiences

1. Faster Check-InAt London Heathrow’s Terminal 2, passengers can get boarding passes and drop bags at any kiosk, no matter which airline they’re flying, going from curb to immigration in just 70 sec-onds on average, even at busy times. (Maybe there is time for room-service break-fast before that flight. . . .)

Security, customs, and baggage handling are finally upping their game at airports worldwide. Now if

only somebody could put all of these innovations in one place, we’d have the world’s greatest terminal.

We’re SO Close. .to having a

PERFECT Airport

Your Next “VACATION” May Be on Your COUCH

1.19 billion

Number of international tourist arrivals

worldwide in 2015—a record. The UN

forecasts 1.81 billion travelers by 2030.

2. Fewer Document ChecksAruba’s international air-port uses cameras with facial-recognition software to verify passengers at secu-rity, customs, and the gate, meaning you’ll only have to show your passport once.

3. Accelerated Security ScreeningDelta spent $1 million this year to develop a new check-point layout that lets five passengers at a time—rather than just one—put their laptops, coats, etc. on the X-ray machine conveyor belt. Lines moved about 30 percent faster.

4. Sharper Carry-On ScannersNew devices that use tech-nology based on hospital CT machines have halved wait times at Amsterdam Schiphol and London Luton—and passengers can even leave liquids (gasp!) in their carry-ons.

5. Personalized NavigationNew Bluetooth “beacons” at Miami International and Amsterdam Schiphol send gate info, directions, and in-airport dining recs to your phone based on exactly where you’re standing in the terminal—meaning no more puzzling over “you are here” maps.

1. Mario, at the Ghent Marriott Hotel

The not quite two-foot-tall dynamo translates 19

languages and hands out room key cards.

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582,271

6. Less Waiting at CustomsNew self-service eGates at eight Australian airports have replaced human agents with cameras and digital passport readers. Assuming that the system trims just three seconds off each passenger’s travel time, fliers will collectively be spared more than a year’s worth of waiting.

7. Shorter SchlepsIt’s still three years out, but Beijing Daxing Inter-national has a radial design, like spokes of a wheel, that means the farthest a flier will ever have to hike is 2,000 feet. Now that’s genius.

Two new wide-body planes, the Airbus A350 XWB and the Boeing 787, have bigger windows that let in more natural light, bathrooms that don’t feel claus- trophobic, and mood lighting that can limit jet lag (no, seriously). They even pump those babies with better cabin air that’s more humid and less dehydrating. But the biggest improvement may be what they’ve taken away. “The number one feedback we get is about the lack of noise,” says Juha Järvinen, chief com-mercial officer of Finnair, which currently has seven A350s, each of which seats 297 passengers.

Long-haul carriers like Cathay Pacific, Etihad, Qatar Airways, and Singapore Airlines have ordered a combined 255 A350s, recognizing that, if they can make the in-flight experience more com-fortable, passengers will go just about anywhere. “Routes that were considered long-haul in the past? They’re not that long anymore,” says Marisa Lucas-Ugena,

head of A350 XWB marketing at Airbus. “We’re going to see the emerging markets—particularly in the Southern Hemisphere—connected. Oakland to Santiago, Johannesburg to Sydney. The A350 was built with that in mind.”

It’s also made with weight-saving com-posites and is equipped with fuel-sipping engines that make ultra-long-hauls eco-nomically viable for carriers. Singapore, for example, ended its reportedly unprof-itable nonstop between New York and Singapore in 2013, but the route will return in 2018, thanks to the A350, shaving at least four hours off the current one-stop travel time. United has ordered 35 of the planes, which it plans to use for long flights to Asia; Delta will get its first of 25 A350s next year, with destinations to be determined. Airbus forecasts global demand for new wide-bodies will top 8,000 over the next 20 years, meaning thousands more A350s and 787s in the air—and far fewer complaints upon touchdown. PAU L B R A DY

New JETS Will Make FLYING Fun AGAIN. (Imagine!)

You’ll Want to BOOK a LAYOVER Rather than DESPERATELY

Try to AVOID One

If it seems like everybody’s still talking about Iceland, you’re right. Last year, more than 1.2 million tourists made the trip, many of them on a free stopover courtesy of Icelandair, which invented the idea of layover-as-vaca-tion back in the 1960s as a way to boost tourism. It only took other airlines 50-plus years to jump on the bandwagon. Air Canada added Toronto stopovers in 2015, and TAP and Copa started programs for Lisbon and Panama City, respectively, this year. Qatar Airways will give you a free guided tour of Doha, including the I. M. Pei–designed Museum

of Islamic Art, if your con-nection is longer than eight hours. And if you book a Helsinki stopover with Finnair, you can tack on a city tour and a hotel room for the night for $150. Layover- friendly carriers also serve Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Taipei. The one thing all of these destinations have in common is healthy tour-ist infrastructure: quality hotels, buzzy restaurants, solid public transportation options (or Uber). So while these cities may not have been on your list, they could soon be— like Iceland—the next hot spots. L I L I T M A R C U S

are just a hint of what’s going to be possible in the next five years. . . • Tour hotels with the Best Western Virtual Reality Experience. • Drop in on the Pyramids with Thomas Cook’s Try Before

3. EMIEW3, at Tokyo’s Haneda

AirportAn English-speaking

two-wheeler that’ll make sure

you’re not lost in translation during

a layover.

Number of hotel rooms being planned

or built in Asia. That’s six percent more

than in the U.S. and ten times the number

coming to Africa.

2. Botlr, at the Aloft Silicon Valley

This R2-D2–shaped robotic bellhop can fetch you

toothpaste or extra towels.

8. Better Airport TransportationAmong easy, comfortable rail connections between ter-minals and city centers, Toronto’s new Union Pearson Express and Denver’s just-opened A Line trains are praiseworthy alternatives to painfully long (and pricey) cab rides.

Condé Nast Traveler / 12.16 67

T H E F U T U R E O F T R AV E L

Hotels everywhere are embracing what the Japanese have done for decades—crunching rooms down to smaller-than-200-square-foot pods. Nine years ago, Midtown Manhattan’s Pod Hotel ushered in the era of the “microhotel” with the mainstream U.S. debut of minimalist rooms: Luggage was stored under the beds, bathrooms were tub-less. In 2015, Marriott launched Moxy in Milan with tiny but gorgeous guest rooms in dark wood and cream leather. Two Roads, which owns Destination, Joie de Vivre, and Thompson hotels, will open the “lifestyle microhotel brand” Tommie in Hollywood in 2018. Smaller rooms are cheaper, of course, and faster to build. The developers of a 249-key Pod Hotel slated for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, say they’ve saved six months by using modular construction without compromising design. At two new AvroKo-designed Arlo properties in New York, rooms average just 150 square feet, and they actually look good with flip-up desks, open closets, and huge windows that make the most of the tight quarters. Not that you’ll feel cramped: The Arlo Hudson Square has two bars, a Southern restaurant from Daniel Boulud protégé Harold Moore, and coffee by Joe, a local favorite. And when you’re in N.Y.C., how much time do you spend in your room anyway? A N D R E W S E S S A

Hotel ROOMS Will Shrink,

but SMART Design.. Will Be Huge

Private JETS Will Still Be

OUTRAGEOUSLY Awesome

Two hours into my Austin–Costa Rica flight aboard the Four Seasons Private Jet, I was on my third flute of Dom, cozied under a cash-mere blanket in my lay- flat seat, trying to figure out how I could always fly this way. The plane, a Boeing 757 tricked out with just 52 busi-ness-class-style seats, was beginning its 25-day trip to nine destinations, including Langkawi and Tanzania, and would nearly circum-navigate the globe in just 25 days, minus the security line waits. Today, companies like Abercrombie & Kent, Crystal AirCruises, and TCS World Travel—which oper-ates the Four Seasons trips—have waiting lists for adven- tures like this $135,000- per-person extravaganza. They promise not only seam-less travel but the chance to, in a single trip, devour smoked short ribs in Austin, ride mile-long zip-lines in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and traverse Lanai on a jeep safari. Other outfitters, like andBeyond and Privel, have recently launched similar journeys through Africa and the American West, respec-tively. They all meet a surging demand for trips that jam dozens of over-the-top experiences into a waste-no- time itinerary, says Javier Loureiro, the Four Seasons concierge who planned my outings. Sure, the private stock of Dom was nice—but never having to wait with the hoi polloi at the gate was even better. Z AC H E V E R S O N

Next-Gen GEAR Will MAKE All the DIFFERENCE in the AIR and On the GROUND

You Fly. • Cruise the Las Vegas Strip (without the 100-degree temps) with Vegas VR. • Preview Hamilton Island or dive the Great Barrier Reef with the Qantas VR app for Samsung Gear VR.

Mophie Powerstation XLCharge both your iPad and phone

with this pocketable battery.

Betabrand Knockout Travel Hoodie

Faux-fur lining makes naps cozier.

Sennheiser Momentum Wireless

They’re noise-canceling but sexy.

Botta Design DuoIt’s a dual-time-zone watch with

a single sleek face.

Knomo Knomad Air OrganizerPolice your charging

cables with this portfolio.

Olloclip Amp up phone pics with these add- on macro and wide-angle lenses.

Aerix Vidius HDThis drone, about the size of a

deck of cards, shoots hi-fi video.

360fly 4K CameraA tennis ball–small camera to

capture 360-degree panoramas.

4. Spencer, at Amsterdam SchipholThis still-experimental

smiling six-foot-two robot guides passengers

to gates.

Away Carry-OnPack this ultralight poly-

carbonate case for quick trips.

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T H E F U T U R E O F T R AV E L

AIRBNB Will Make HOTEL

..SUITES Feel More like HOME

I’ve seen the luxury hotel room of the future, and it’s made of cardboard. At the new Research and Discovery Studio at Four Seasons headquarters in Toronto, they’ve mocked up a full-scale corrugated guest room to deter-mine if the vanity area is too wide (it is) and if a built-in desk is preferable to a freestanding round table (it isn’t). Down the hall, they’re picking out which Bernardaud porcelain and Riedel crystal are right for the forthcoming Four Seasons Hotel London at Ten Trinity Square. In a “wet zone,” designers are testing rainfall showerheads. It’s all part of the brand’s effort to deliver a distinctive yet consistent experience. While rental-home sites like Airbnb or HomeAway are good at the former, they can’t always promise the latter. Big hotel operators—caught flat-footed by the emergence of these sharing-economy insurgents—are now racing to add idiosyncrasies. Starwood has invested $12 million in a 46,000-square-foot “idea lab” in Manhattan. Marriott’s newly opened M Beta hotel in Charlotte is a real-world room-design proving ground. The Hyatt Regency O’Hare is where the company tested new paraben-free BeeKind bath products. And Four Seasons is considering swapping standard coffee mugs for hand-thrown pottery—the sort you’d expect to find in a home, not a hotel: As CEO J. Allen Smith says, “No detail is too small.” A N D R E W S E S S A

If test flights succeed, the helium-filled, cargo- hauling Airlander 10 will be passenger-ready by the 2020s.

NASA’s four-person Orion will ferry crews beyond earth’s orbit as early as 2023, but moon landings for tourists are still TBD.

Your GRANDKIDS. Will Be SPRING

BREAKING by Blimp

Elon Musk’s idea for a pneumatic-tube Hyperloop could cut travel times between L.A. and S.F. to 35 minutes by 2035.

The Concorde-like Quiet Supersonic Technology X-Plane could be flying 924 mph to London, with no sonic booms, by 2027.

If you’ve ever spent hours sifting through hundreds of hotels on Kayak, blame co-founder Paul English. His innovative one-stop-shop-ping approach revolution-ized the way we search for travel on the Web when it launched in 2004. Now his new venture Lola, founded after he left Kayak in 2013, is another solution to the tyr-anny of online choice. “We

don’t want to show you 300 hotels in New York,” English says. “We want to show you three.” To do that, he’s assem-bled an artificial intelligence–enhanced travel agency that’s already attracted 10,000 users. Rather than phone in their trip-planning requests, most travelers communicate with agents via text message, whether they’re looking for the best vintage shops in L.A., a last-minute hotel room in Chicago, or ways to spend a port day in Charlotte Amalie. Lola’s AI does a preliminary annotation of incoming mes-sages, then passes them along to a team of 20 human travel

53%Increase in U.S.

travelers to the Middle East from 2010 to

2015—to roughly 2 .05 million annually.

5. Mirai the velociraptor, at the

Henn-na Hotel Check in by dino-bot?

Only in Japan.

agents who reply to users in real time with actionable intel. “It’s like having an executive assistant,” says English. “You type one line and everything is booked for you.” Lola is betting that texts will continue to replace clicks and calls as the easiest way to plan a trip. So are competitors including Hello Hipmunk, Mezi, SnapTravel, and Tradeshift Go. “It’s a little retro,” English says of his effort to reinvent the travel-agency model, “but people already spend more time in messaging apps than in all other apps com-bined.” E L A I N E G L U S AC

These still-in-development game changers will put us a few steps

closer to sci-fi teleporters.

• Rock-climb California’s Needles or tightrope-walk in Moab with Home Turf, from the VR company Jaunt. • Vacation on the next planet over with Hello Mars, on Google’s new Daydream platform.

Artificial INTELLIGENCE

Will Be PLANNING Your Next

VACATION

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T H E F U T U R E O F T R AV E L