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The driving force behind Future Travel Studio

Our two founders with complementary skills, extensive experience, and a deep-rooted desire to help drive innovation and excellence across the mobility sector.
Richard Fisher
Richard Fisher
Co-Founder
Richard brings more than 20 years’ experience in the railway industry, beginning with UK Train Operating Companies before spending over a decade in strategic consultancy. His work has focused on shaping outcomes and defining scope for major rail infrastructure projects and train services. This includes serving as a technical adviser to the UK’s Department for Transport, where he focused on specifying outcomes for UK National Rail Contracts. His other work includes advising on major rail infrastructure projects such as HS2, Euston Development Corporation and Canada’s ALTO High-Speed Rail programme.
Richard is energised by situations where there is a good idea, good people, or a genuine public need - but the system is stopping it from becoming real. He is particularly interested in the space between invention and adoption: where policy, procurement, regulation, commercial risk and operational reality determine whether new ideas can survive. His motivation is to create the conditions in which useful innovation can move beyond pilots and become something that can be understood, funded, delivered and scaled.
Richard’s gift is seeing the system behind the symptom, then translating between the people and disciplines needed to make change happen.
He has a BSc in Railway Operations Management and an MSc in Railway Systems Engineering and Integration.
Nik is a design visionary with more than two decades designing customer experience across passenger transport, first in aviation with Virgin Atlantic and then across rail and land mobility. His work has centred on translating passenger insight into service propositions, train and aircraft interiors, and operational touchpoints that are both desirable for customers and deliverable for operators. This includes shaping customer experience strategy for HS2, Great British Railways, leading customer experience and train interior specification work for Virgin Trains Europe,and developing the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Suite, one of the most recognised premium cabin innovations in aviation.
Nik’s work is driven by a belief that better transport starts with a deeper understanding of the people using it. He is focused on uncovering what passengers need, where services fail them, and how design can turn those insights into solutions that feel intuitive, inclusive and genuinely enjoyable. He is particularly committed to improving journeys for customers with accessibility needs, helping more people use passenger transport with confidence and dignity.
Nik’s gift is curiosity: the ability to ask better questions, get beneath the obvious problem, and use design to turn customer insight into practical change.
He has a BA (Hons) in Product Design from Kent Institute of Art & Design and completed an Erasmus Exchange in Product and Car Design at Milan Polytechnic.
Nik Lusardi
Nik Lusardi
Co-Founder
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Our Key Message

What distinguishes Future Travel Studio is the founders’ ability to turn promising mobility ideas into investable, deliverable ventures.

Richard brings the systems perspective needed to navigate policy, procurement, regulation and operational complexity, while Nik brings the customer and design perspective needed to ensure new propositions are grounded in real passenger needs.
Together, they are focused on the critical gap between invention and adoption: identifying opportunities with genuine public value, shaping them into credible ventures, and helping them move beyond pilots into services that can be funded, delivered and scaled.
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Consultancy Case Studies

Work behind the model

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HS2 - Unified Target Operating Model

Nik supported the development of HS2’s Unified Target Operating Model, helping embed customer experience into the future operating railway. He worked with industry partners to define customer-focused outcomes, improve cross-organisational alignment and ensure customer needs remained central to the operating model.
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Great British Rail Transition Team

Nik led the development of a customer experience strategy to support the creation of Great British Railways. Through stakeholder engagement and strategic design, he developed a customer-focused operating framework that was adopted within the Target Operating Model.
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Serco - UK Rail Market Strategy

Richard and Nik worked with Serco to develop a renewed vision and value proposition for re-entering the UK rail market. Through strategy workshops and market analysis, they created a differentiated, customer-led proposition aligned with future industry priorities.
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NEOM Railway Customer Experience

Nik developed an end-to-end customer experience blueprint for NEOM’s future railway. Through customer research, personas and service design, the work created a roadmap for delivering a seamless and integrated passenger experience.
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ALTO High Frequency Rail Canada

Richard supported Transport Canada and VIA Rail in defining and evaluating operational requirements for Canada’s High Frequency Rail programme. His work helped shape the procurement process, assess bidder proposals and identify the solution best placed to deliver the desired operational outcomes.
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Virgin Trains Europe

Richard and Nik supported the development of Virgin Trains Europe’s high-speed rail proposition, combining customer experience design with operational and engineering insight. Their work covered the onboard passenger proposition, accessibility, train interiors and operational requirements for London St Pancras International station.
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Innovation

How we got here

1

TravelSpace

Our innovation journey began during the pandemic with TravelSpace, a passenger demand management platform developed with Tractic Ltd to help passengers travel with confidence and operators manage capacity when confronted with the challenges of social distancing guidance.
2

GoWELL+

Richard and Nik were then selected for the Mayor of London’s COVID-Safe Travel Accelerator, where they developed GoWELL+, a suite of digital journey-planning tools designed to reduce travel anxiety and improve confidence in public transport.
5

DreamSuite™

These experiences led to DreamSuite™, a premium lie-flat seating concept for long-distance rail. DreamSuite secured more than £300,000 of innovation funding and strong industry support, but also revealed the structural barriers that prevent promising transport innovations from reaching market – lessons that became the catalyst for where we are today.

Give us the problems to solve. Our process surfaces, defines, and shapes them into investable ventures.

Please get in touch below and we will contact you as soon as we can to discuss your enquiry. We look forward to any partner opportunities and moving the industry forward, one venture at a time.
Future Travel Studios
145 Address Rd,
Town name,
Postal code
01234 343 3405
hello@futuretravelstudios.com