Hotels Want to Wean You Off Your Gadget Addiction
For vacationing tech addicts who simply can't relax without plunging a Twitter-feed mainline between their toes, a new trend in the travel business: digital detox. The Wall Street Journal reports that several hotels and resorts are offering enticements to visitors willing to abandon the grid during their stay. They target these junkies in the social media crack dens where they tend to lurk, offering discounts if the travelers promise to surrender their gadgets and computers at check-in.
In return, concierges provide them with old-fashioned diversions, from board games to literary classics. (Most, but not all, also yank TV sets and telephones from "detox" rooms.)
Of course, as with any addiction, going cold-turkey can result in withdrawal symptoms.
Dean Fisher, 30, an interior designer and event coordinator in Chicago, recently booked a "Technology Break" at the Hotel Monaco with her boyfriend, Michael Renaud, 33. After a digital-free night in the hotel's Tranquility Suite, Ms. Fisher says she woke up feeling disoriented. Without her iPhone, she says, she "didn't know what time it was...I felt really anxious."
It might be a novel way for these hotels to fill rooms, but it's also treading on dangerous territory. One false slip in the hospitality department, and it's straight to Yelp for a marathon bitchfest the second those testy guests get those gadgets back. [WSJ, photo via Shutterstock]