by Jen Mallia
Last updated: 12:20 PM ET, Mon March 31, 2025
When the Global Wellness Institute (GWI) released its top trends for 2025, the first listed was “analog wellness.” The idea goes a bit beyond the mainstream, “lock your phone and laptop up for the weekend digital detox” idea, by introducing pre-digital activities to today’s chronically online customers. Will it be the ticket to encouraging travellers to give up their devices and take a break?
Hotel News says “This trend towards tech-free travel reflects widespread digital fatigue, with luxury travelers seeking time, silence, and an escape from the hyper-connected world.” It fits well with findings from Flight Centre that indicates Canadians are embracing soft travel and the "calm-cation".
Some of the examples Spa Executive points to include hotels that offer old-fashioned alternatives to the mindless scrolling so many of us get sucked in to, such as printed maps, pocket dictionaries, old-school alarm clocks, Polaroid cameras, books, games, and simple “dumbphones” for emergencies.
Hotels and resorts are putting their own spin on the idea. Jamie Davis Smith rounded up seven luxury options for Success where travellers can indulge in screen free time, such as a converted monastery in Türkiye, an expedition cruise in the Amazon, or a resort stay in Mexico where guests can have their TV switched out for board games and trade in their devices for access to low tech activities such as bike tours and snorkeling.
GWI puts the trend into three broad categories. The first, it calls “analog tech experiments” where guests are encouraged to use low tech amenities instead of their phones. The second is elevated handicraft programming, in which guests can participate in workshops that may have wonderfully familiar echoes of summer camp crafts. These crafts though, such as the embroidery, clay modeling and calligraphy offerings at the Royal Mansour in Marrakesh have a decidedly adult twist.
GWI lists pre-industrial activities as the third category in the anti-digital trend. These likely won’t make it on to the amenities list at every chain hotel, but are unique alternatives for someone searching to do a 180 from their everyday, highly connected life. Examples include ancient grass weaving, ceramics, and honey harvesting at Portugal's Viceroy at Ombria Algarve visitors are even given the opportunity to work as a shepherd for a day, driving the flocks home. At the South African hotel Babylonstoren guests can learn blacksmithing, milking and cream separation, leather working, carpentry and wheat milling at Soetmelksvlei, a restored 17th-century farm/resort.
An analog vacation may not be for everyone, but these low tech options may be the perfect way to encourage overworked clients to switch off, if only for a little break.
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