What if the next trip didn't exist at all, but was designed by an algorithm, in a place that never existed, among credible yet synthetic emotions? Beyond the real: the new frontier of travel.
It is neither a stylistic exercise nor a distant dystopia. It is the present that is forming as artificial intelligence learns to imagine in our place, to generate landscapes, experiences, and even a form of artificial nostalgia.
In tourism, the boundary between real and simulated becomes so thin that it becomes porous, and the true discontinuity is not technological, but cultural. We are entering the era of the post-real, or 'reality plus' theorized by the Australian philosopher who explores the boundaries of the possible, David Chalmers, where travel ceases to be merely an experience of the world and becomes the production of alternative worlds.
If generative technologies can build complete itineraries, coherent narratives, and increasingly seductive simulations because they are more accessible, efficient, and customizable than reality, what space remains for direct human experience? What happens when we delegate to algorithms not only the organization but the very act of imagining, shortening the distance between desire and automatic shortcut? The central question is not where technology will take us, but what we are willing to leave behind in the name of convenience or wonder.
The post-real is not a theoretical hypothesis: it is a condition that is emerging now and that reshapes the very meaning of travel.
A sort of 'point of no return' that will be discussed at BTM Italy 2026, in the panel 'Form and substance. Post-real and liminal landscapes', scheduled for February 26 at 1:00 PM in the Think Tank room, with voices from different but converging worlds: Monica Gobbato, lawyer specialized in privacy, AI, and digital law, Luca Pozzi, visual artist and cross-disciplinary mediator, Michela Mola, owner of the Hotel Singer Palace, and Simone Puorto, techno-philosopher, speaker, and author. The discussion will be led by Giulia Eremita, member of the Advisory Board for Digital Tourism in the scientific committee of BTM Italy and expert in digital marketing in tourism.
It will be a dialogue between law, art, hospitality, and philosophy, designed to explore the future of the tourist experience and to ask whether we will inhabit the post-real as conscious protagonists or remain spectators, fascinated but passive.
Giulia Eremita - Advisor BTM Italy for Digital for Tourism
