Once the sight of someone by a hotel pool with a laptop would have been weird. What’s he doing? Work? Relax dude.
But things have changed. No matter where I’ve travelled in the past five years – everywhere from Sri Lanka to Istanbul – the same sight has greeted me by hotel swimming pools, lobbies and dining rooms. It is the tops of peoples’ heads as they scroll and stare at their screens.
I am one of those addicts. No matter where I am in the world, my phone comes with me. My definition of anxiety is being somewhere with 1% battery and no charger handy.
You’d think hotels would be happy – or at least agnostic – about the ubiquity of mobile phones. After all, many of us phone addicts are Instagramming the food, the cocktails, the swimming pool – providing the hotel with free advertising.
But it turns out people sitting alone (or even worse – with others) affixed to their screens kills the vibe.
Hotels have now started offering digital detox packages – as much for the guest having a tech break – as improving the atmosphere in common areas.
This year the Wyndham Grand’s five US resorts offered incentives for guests to give up their phones – including prime spots by the pool, free snacks and the chance to win return visits.
Take-up has been strong and the chain is planning to expand the program next year to more of its hotels.
In Sydney, the QT is offering a “Power Down” package – where guests surrender their phones on check-in for a minimum 12-hour break from screen time and in return receive zen treats such as complimentary cocktails and bath products.
Checking in, when staff heard I was doing the digital detox package there was a palatable frisson behind the front desk. A man disappeared and returned with a small, brown, wooden box. It looked like a coffin.
He held up a large key ceremonially. I handed my phone over and he placed it in the box and locked it.
I felt some anxiety about giving up my phone but was curious to see if the break weakened my addiction.
Mentally I was planning to kick back in the bath and watch many hours of television – but when I arrived at the door of my room a man introduced himself as my concierge and told me that he had just removed the remotes.
“What do you mean? I can’t watch television?”
Then it occurred to me that the hotel had interpreted the word “digital” liberally to include television.
“Do you want my laptop too?” I asked, somewhat sourly. It felt useless without a wifi password.
The aim of the digital detox is complete relaxation – and that is what happened when I only had a bath and book (and later spa treatment) to distract me.
Some aspects of going phone-free were annoying – for example I had to keep using the room phone to ring down to reception to find out what time it was. And arranging to meet my friend Andrew for dinner was stressful, as I had ring him on a landline to make arrangements, which then couldn’t be changed as he had no way of contacting me.
During dinner I noticed how people at the other tables interacted with their phones, suspending conversation for long periods of time to scroll through them or photograph their meal. Many just kept their phones next to their plates, picking them up from time to time.
Over dinner, Andrew told me that this afternoon Hillary Clinton hinted she’s going to run for president again. OMG, no! Really? Again? How could I have missed this piece of news? A few hours off Twitter and I felt left behind.
When my green Midori cocktail arrived, I felt another pang. It would have looked great on stories – maybe with a glitter filter.
I looked down at the table, thinking my phone would be there – in the manner of a ghost limb.
When it was time to be reunited with my phone the following day (first there was the strangeness of waking not knowing what time it was), I was pleased but underwhelmed with what I had missed. I could read backwards the 50-plus group chat messages sent in the various platforms overnight. I could check the notifications about the tweet I sent 20 hours ago. I could check if Hillary Clinton was running for president again.
I’d missed nothing urgent. No one had died. And in return I’d received a chunk of solid time to read half a novel, and a dinner conversation that flowed properly and had depth because it was uninterrupted by phones.
Victoria Doidge of the QT told me: “We all know that person who can’t get off their phone over dinner … when you have a hotel bar with people open to striking up a conversation, there is an immediate flow on effect to the mood and ambience. A space rich in real life interactions will always be favoured over a room of phone lit faces mindlessly scrolling.”
So far the program is popular with guests, many of whom don’t need much excuse to get off their phones. “We’ve even had guests ask to lock away their phone while dining in one of our restaurants! Some of these guests aren’t even staying the night with us.”
Accommodation was provided by the QT Sydney. Power Down packages are available at all QT Hotels in Australia and New Zealand until October 2020. Variable rates apply.
