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Delta Locals reveals the rise of human-centred travel content

Delta Locals, Global

Global – Delta Air Lines is entering the travel-content space with Delta Locals, a new platform that connects users to global destinations through immersive virtual tours hosted by the people who live there.

Launching with four locations – Los Angeles, Tokyo, Patagonia and Sicily – the platform spotlights local residents who give intimate, nuanced perspectives on their hometowns, which can be accessed anywhere in the world.

Developed with creative agency Kin, Delta Locals marks the airline’s first move beyond functional travel planning and into inspiration-led, content-first engagement. While the aim is ultimately to encourage real-world travel, the digital experiences mean that users can browse destinations in a virtual, low-impact way, reflecting how Imagination Travel has matured since the pandemic.

‘On one level, Delta Locals is a way to discover destinations and connect you to new places, people, and perspectives,’ explains Kin co-founder Sophie Ozoux to Creative Review. ‘It also positions Delta at the forefront of what travel content and planning could look like as more people lean into sustainable travel and avoid traditional tourist traps.’

The shift signals a broader industry movement toward human, homely hospitality, countering the commercialisation of platforms, including Airbnb. Recent activations such as Destination Canada’s OpenHome, which transforms residents’ dinner tables into micro-tourism experiences, illustrate how Homely Hospitality is becoming a key strategy for brands seeking to connect travellers with warmth and genuine local insight.

Strategic opportunity

Brands can amplify cultural appeal by using lived-experience storytelling or sensory mechanisms that communicate the atmosphere, texture and rhythm of a destination – as explored in our Sensory Destinations report

Foresight Friday: Ella Murray, junior creative visualiser

Every Friday, we offer an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, junior creative visualiser Ella Murray unpacks the saturation of modern knowledge consumption and the new models seeking to animate it once again.

: With content fatigue and ad bombardment shaping the daily scroll, anger has emerged as one of the few signals capable of piercing the noise and compelling people to react. Oxford University Press’ breakdown of its newly selected Word of the Year shows how rage bait generates comments and conflict, compelling even quiet lurkers to step into the discussion. But its dominance raises a deeper cultural question: if outrage is the most efficient tool for generating attention, how else can we design spaces for discussion and debate that don’t rely on triggering reactions? Finding alternative mechanisms for collective conversation and opinion sharing will become essential in moving beyond polarised endpoints and towards more constructive, shared understanding.

Photography by Antoni Shkraba, Poland

: Chanel’s partnership with Shanghai’s Power Station of Art offers one such antidote. The new Espace Gabrielle Chanel is the first public library in mainland China dedicated entirely to contemporary art and design, and positions documentation as a living cultural resource. Through exhibitions, talks, workshops and publishing, it invites the public into communal engagement with ideas. This aligns with a broader movement of temporary reading rooms and public knowledge spaces emerging in galleries and cultural spaces. These initiatives demonstrate that cultural institutions and brands can play a role in creating environments oriented towards slower learning and collective reflection to counterbalance the reactive tempos of online discourse.

: Meanwhile, digital culture is developing its own versions of these reflective spaces. The growing conversation around digital gardening highlights a shift toward non-linear thinking, personal knowledge ecosystems and collaborative idea-building. The recent launch of YOO, a spatial 3D creative network for deeper learning and multidimensional self-discovery, extends this trend. Described as a place to gather inspiration, thoughts and memories, YOO functions like a next-generation Myspace: part digital world-building tool, part communal mind map, encouraging users to step into each other’s ideas and connect them in new ways. Other notable mentions include Soot, Sublime and Capacities for your digital gardening needs. In contrast to our persistently algorithmically optimised feeds, these platforms promote exploration over reaction, curiosity over outrage, and signal an evolving desire for more meaningful, self-directed modes of connection online.

Quote of the week

The Espace Gabrielle Chanel library embodies ‘cross-cultural exchange, of honouring heritage, housing the archives of a nation and also showcasing the best of what’s coming in the avant-garde’

Yana Peel, president for arts, culture and heritage, Chanel (source: ARTnews)

Stat: UK shoppers turn to agentic AI as Black Friday sparks surge in automated commerce

AI imagery by The Future Laboratory, UK

UK – New research from PSE Consulting, a UK payments and technology consultancy, reveals a sharp rise in AI-enabled shopping tools in the run up to Christmas, marking a pivotal moment for consumer trust in agentic commerce. Nearly half of UK adults (49%) use AI regularly, with 22% planning to rely on it for festive shopping.

Uptake is highest among 18–34-year-olds, 42% of whom intend to use AI for deal hunting and gift buying. These statistics highlight growing consumer adoption of AI-driven shopping tools, which are emerging as the next era of conversational retail and a move towards fully automated purchasing.

Of those planning to use AI this season, 85% say they would trust it to place orders and complete payments autonomously, signalling a shift from AI as a recommendation engine to a fully transactional shopping agent. PSE Consulting notes that this aligns with forecasts that automated shopping tools could influence ‘several trillion dollars’ in global retail spending by 2030.

The findings follow the launch of OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol with Stripe, which is expected to reach Europe within months. Yet, PSE Consulting reports, there is still concern: 49% worry about data privacy, 46% worry about fraud and 41% fear incorrect purchases.

Chris Jones, managing director of PSE Consulting, said, ‘What’s remarkable is how quickly AI has moved from novelty to an integral part of shopping,’ adding that an ‘AI confidence divide’ is shaping behaviour as early adopters embrace automation while older consumers hold back.

The agentic retail section of our macrotrend report Culture-coded Retail explores how consumers are eager for AI-informed shopping, will embrace AI-driven decisions and value AI concierges for personalised experiences.

Strategic opportunity

Reduce friction by designing AI-powered journeys and embed AI concierges that personalise deals and provide replenishment for automation-ready younger consumers