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New Zealand Airport Institutes 3-Minute Hug Limit When Dropping Off

Max hug time

New Zealand’s Dunedin Airport launched a sign that limits the time you can hug someone to say goodbye in an effort to ease airport traffic congestion. It went predictably viral, with people calling the sign and rule behind it “inhumane” while sharing it widely. All those detractors might be missing the point. This is clearly … Read more

The Next Las Vegas Will Be in the Arabian Desert, But It’s a Secret.

Al Marjan Wynn

“The first rule of casinos in the UAE: You do not talk about casinos in the UAE.” Intrigued yet? This week an article from travel site Skift sorts through the rumors and follows the money in early investments to piece together an inside look at the emerging plans for creating a Las Vegas style gambling destination in … Read more

A First Look at America’s Smartest Highway

America's smart highway

Driverless vehicles are obviously going to be part of humanity’s future, but they aren’t experiencing a great PR moment right now. Every day it seems there is another story about an incident involving a driverless vehicle hitting someone, mistaking something on the road or generally malfunctioning. Not to mention the justifiable fears of hacking that … Read more

France Creates Scratch-and-Sniff Stamps That Smell Like Fresh Baguettes

France Creates Scratch-and-Sniff Stamps That Smell Like Fresh Baguettes

Just in time for the feast of Saint-Honoré, a day honoring the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, La Poste in France released a limited edition set of scratch-and-sniff stamps featuring a baguette wrapped in the national colors of the French flag. The effect was achieved through “microcapsules of fragrance embedded in ink” and … Read more

How Airbnb “Icons” Illustrate the Future of Immersive Entertainment

How Airbnb “Icons” Illustrate the Future of Immersive Entertainment

The future of entertainment will be driven by more immersive experiences. This week, there was a story about how the Meta Quest VR headset will be accessible by passengers on long haul flights. The possibilities to tie this into tourism, destinations and the overall travel experience are vast. Also this week, Airbnb has been getting some attention … Read more

Why Industrial Tourism Is One of the Fastest Growing Trends in Travel

Industrial Tourism

Portugal is one of several countries investing big into industrial tourism – a term that describes experiences where travelers can visit factories to see how products get made. Of course, vineyards and liquor distilleries along with many food manufacturers have long offered this sort of experience. But Portugal is taking it one step further. In São João da Madeira, … Read more

The New Luxury Airline for Dogs Called BarkAir Is Not a Joke, It’s a Brilliant Marketing Stunt

First Class Dog

Apparently it has been a dream of dogfood subscription brand BarkBox for more than a decade to create an airline dedicated to flying dogs and their human companions around the world. Now they are making it a reality through a partnership with private jet charter company Talon Air and the way they are doing it is … Read more

The Good and Bad of Planning Your Next Trip Using AI Travel Tools

The Good and Bad of Planning Your Next Trip Using AI Travel Tools

The promise is appealing. Just put your desired holiday destination into an AI travel planning tool and it can quickly generate a sample itinerary with all the must-visit sights from a certain destination. Yet as one journalist found when doing a test of AI as a trip planning assistant, there are some pretty big tradeoffs you’ll … Read more

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In addition to Non-Obvious Thinking, Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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