“We used to have a tag to show which properties had Wi-Fi. Now we’re adding a ‘no Wi-Fi’ tag,” said Martin Dunford, CEO of Cool Places, a U.K. site for booking accommodations. At Mexico’s Grand Velas Resorts, where rooms can cost thousands of dollars per night, guests are choosing to pay an additional fee for the digital detox program. This gives them a room free of technology like TVs, and their devices are kept in a safe by the concierge for the duration of their stay. Closer to home, the Urban Cowboy Lodge in the Catskills in New York state gives guests the option to put their devices in a locked box for the duration of their stay.
Dunford partnered with the University of Greenwich and the University of East Anglia to study how digital detoxes affect people while on vacation. Not everyone’s a fan at first, but many enjoy it once they adjust.
“Guests go stir crazy in the first 24 hours,” he said. “But after 48 hours, they are well adjusted and start getting into other activities. At the end of a three-day stay — or longer — we find guests may be happy to have their phones back or can be a bit take-it-or-leave-it about it.”
