By Rohit Talwar, Steve Wells, and Alexandra Whittington

Fast Future’s Life in 2025: “Say Hello Say Goodbye” Scenarios were developed in partnership with Huawei Consumer Business Group. This scenario explores how a range of exponentially advancing technologies such as AI and big data could transform the way we travel.

Over the next five years, 5G will provide the platform for travel and travel planning to become a truly multi-sensory, immersive experience.

The use of AI will allow for seamless and highly interconnected multi-modal travel experiences. Once we select a destination or accept a recommendation, our AI digital twins will complete our door to door travel arrangements using our personalised travel preferences that they have built up a continuously updated picture of over time. This will factor in timings, ground transport, rail, airline or cruise line, departure port, vessel type, in journey catering, hotel, room amenities, cancellations, rebooking, and environmental impacts – which will all be tied to our personal schedule.

Say goodbye to…

• User accessed travel apps and booking sites – Our AI could do all the searching for us, to eliminate the need to spend hours scrolling through travel choices. Instead, our AI will increasingly be able to curate the perfect experience through learned behaviours – including the holiday images you have responded to most positively on photo sharing platforms, as well as your continually evolving reactions to the world around you.
• Being late to the airport – for even the most disorganised traveller. Constant reminders from the AI within our smartphones, alongside robo-packing assistance, will ensure we are ready on time for the autonomous vehicle pick up – meaning no more missed flights, trains, or coaches.

Booking could become highly immersive using AR and VR – which could allow us to smell the hotel bathroom fragrances, taste the airline food, and feel the bed linen – all before making a choice. Alternatively, future travel experiences in 2025 could occur on a continuum ranging from partially to completely virtual. For example, multi-sensory AR and VR could provide the experience of a cold arctic night, the savanna winds on our face, and the force of a lion’s roar – all from the comfort of our sofa.

Say goodbye to…

• Travel excursions left to chance, bad hotel decisions, and overpriced meals.
• Physical travel as we begin to embrace virtual holidays.As socially conscious consumers reduce their overall ecological footprint by taking advantage of the immersive possibilities of AR and VR and opt for “stay at home” multi-sensory travel experiences.
• Wanderlust might be seen as a historical anachronism, while actual travel may seem to be a privilege or a relic.

Using a combination of biometric security and facial recognition coupled with blockchain based passports, immigration controls could all but disappear. We should be able to board and leave international planes, trains, and ships – and enter or depart from countries with the minimum of interruption.

At our destination, our smartphone-based AI technology is already starting to enable real-time two-way translation, with facial recognition eliminating the need for a hotel room key, and biometrics allowing us to complete purchases with a blink of an eye. By 2025, these could be replaced by multi-parameter scanning to identify our unique personal genetic signature. Our could be AI initiating purchases autonomously because it has detected patterns of brain activity that suggest we want to buy the item we are looking at.

Say goodbye to…

• Delays and long queues when travelling from one country to the next – the traditional bottlenecks of immigration and security controls could be eliminated, enabling increased passage speed, easing the flow of travellers, and reducing border control costs and hold ups.
• Communication barriers – as our smartphone-based AI reaches the standard of the very best multilingual human translators.

Along our journey self-owning, independent, clean, and autonomous electric cars will transport us. They will earn fares for each journey, pool with other cars on the road to self-regulate traffic and self-insure, and share their profits with those involved in manufacturing, financing, servicing, and refuelling the vehicle.

At the destination, multi-sensory AR and VR will far surpass the role of traditional guidebooks, going beyond text and pictures and allowing us to experience how places might have evolved over time – including the sights, sounds, smells, language, dress styles, and modes of transport.

Say goodbye to…

• Traditional taxi services, taxi ownership, and variable journey times to the traveller’s destination – as autonomous vehicles and smart traffic management redefine the door to door vehicle travel experience.
• Paper based guidebooks – with the immersive technologies able to create a much greater depth of experience and understanding of what we see and do on our travels than ever before.
• Self-driven rental cars and the need for customer-facing GPS or maps – the transportation will take you where you need to go, so no need for directions.

The authors are futurists with Fast Future – a professional foresight firm specializing in delivering keynote speeches, executive education, research, and consulting for global clients on the emerging future and the impacts of change. To arrange a presentation on the Life in 2025 scenarios please contact

To access more of our articles and learn more about our work please visit www.fastfuture.com

You can find summaries of the ten scenarios here.

To find out more about the developments, ideas, tools, and approaches to help you navigate a fast changing future, why not attend one of the events taking place during Fast Future’s London Futures Week.