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Mask’s eco-safari resort makes its own water

Baobab Luxury Safari Resort by Mask Architects, Africa

South Africa – Architecture and design firm Mask has imagined a safari resort that produces its own water. The country has suffered severe droughts in recent years, with water supply rationed in key cities.

The eco-conscious Baobab Luxury Safari Resort has been proposed as an idyllic getaway in nature where guests are invited to interact with wildlife and live out their treehouse fantasies in baobab tree-shaped lodges that are 3.5 metres off the ground. Set in the South African forest, each treehouse will be fitted with Mask Architects’ solar-powered Air-to-Water technology, which produces water by extracting moisture from humid air. This water is purified through pipes installed in the lodges, providing hydration for guests for the duration of their stay, and is also collected in tanks at the resort and eventually delivered to local communities suffering from water shortages. Mask Architects says: ‘With this project, our goal is to make the most basic need of water accessible rather than a luxury experience.’

With sustainability at the front of their minds, in Empowered Travel we detail how travellers are seeking out tourist spots that make an effort to embrace nature.

Strategic opportunity

Consumers are increasingly conscious of the ways in which global travel can harm local environments; offer authentic experiences that make an effort to support local environments and communities

Upcoming Web3 platform Syky envisages a more open fashion world

UK – Syky, pronounced ‘psy-che’, has hinted at a new era for luxury fashion in Web3. The start-up, which has raised £7.7m ($9.5m, €8.7m) in Series A funding led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is building a tech-powered platform to unleash creative opportunities for future fashion designers and consumers.

Founded by fashion industry veteran Alice Delahunt, Syky wants to build a fair future for fashion using a blockchain-enabled luxury platform. Serving multiple purposes, the Web3 hub will act as an incubator, marketplace and social community for designers and consumers alike. To kick-start the launch, Syky released an NFT, The Keystone, on 20 January and awarded 50 tokens to aspiring designers. Holders will join a network of creatives and get access to digital and real-life fashion events, insider information and industry reports.

In the future, any Syky user will be able to create, curate, share and trade fashion collections on the platform. ‘We build a platform that equalises creative opportunity for aspiring designers, from emerging to established brands,’ says Delahunt. Syky joins the growing list of players fuelling a tech-powered fashion renaissance and retail shake-up.

Syky, US

Strategic opportunity

Creative communities are still riddled with gatekeeping and barriers to entry. Use the open internet and decentralised networks to promote creative expression and knowledge exchange

Stat: Nearly one-third of professionals have used ChatGPT at work

Global – A January survey by Fishbowl, a social media platform owned by employer review site Glassdoor, claims that almost 30% of the nearly 4,500 professionals surveyed have already used OpenAI’s ChatGPT at work.

The survey asked white collar workers at companies including Amazon, Bank of America, Edelman, Google, IBM, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Co, Meta, Nike, Twitter and thousands of others if they’ve used ChatGPT or other AI tools to help with tasks at work. It showed that Gen Z professionals have the highest rate of adoption, with 29% having used it at work. Following Gen Z are Gen X, with an adoption rate of 28%, and Millennials with 27%.

By gender, 20% of women and 30% of men have used AI to help with tasks at work, while the marketing and advertising sector has the highest adoption, with 37% of workers in the industry saying they’ve used AI to assist with work-related tasks. Healthcare has the lowest usage, at 15%, while accounting and teaching come in at 16% and 19%, respectively.

Microsoft is rumoured to be discussing an £8bn ($10bn, €9.2bn) investment in OpenAI in a bid to integrate the natural language model into its Teams and Office software. It’s one more step in what is now becoming a rapid adoption of AI models, an issue we explore in our Generative AI Creativity Market report.

Strategic opportunity

AI and natural language programming (NLP) models have the potential to change the very nature of the way that we work and create – but this may only be realised after a period of disruption. Now is the time to explore how AI will affect all aspects of your business.