Trend: Not Just Digital Detox, But Analog Travel
Week of February 19th, 2025
Can analogue living cure digital burnout in 2025?–Wallpaper
This Wallpaper wellness report is devoted to the increasingly contradictory wellness market GWS outlined in its 2025 trends report. In travel, you have the boom in medical-longevity and biohacking clinic-resorts (all those concierge doctors and diagnostics), such as Chenot Palace Weggis in Switzerland. On the other hand, there’s an equally powerful hunger for anti-tech analog destinations, such as Ibiza’s retreat Off-Season, designed to heal digital burnout with everything from sound healing to connecting with farm animals. Or the Dutch movement Sanctum and its “Frequency Festivals” that have created a rabid following for the “communal euphoria” they unleash with their unplugged part-silent-disco, part-mindfulness experiences––that leave people weeping.
Places that offer ‘analog vacations’–Success
This article explores how more hotels and resorts are leaning into analog amenities and activities to help guests be far more present. Hotel Ranga in Iceland offers guests a full “analog menu” with playing cards, games, disposable cameras, coloring books of local folklore, and paper maps. At San Diego’s Lakehouse Resort, the “Unplugged Sail Club” visitors get an analog experience on boats with binoculars, bird-watching guidebooks, fishing poles, board games, Polaroid cameras and a guitar (to replace Spotify).
Digital detoxing gains allure in travel–The New York Times
One of the NYT’s main travel predictions for 2025: more tour operators and hospitality brands will offer “digital detox” retreats where travelers opt into an internet-free environment, often in nature—and with more destinations featuring completely off-the-grid experiences. Some are simply about digital disconnection, such as the Logout Livenow travel agency in Sardinia organizing vacations with a “zero technology” mantra, while more, like Unplugged’s UK cabins, swap the phone for analog tech like radios, board games and Polaroid cameras.
To savor your next vacation, ditch your phone and grab a colored pencil–The New York Times
This new article covers just one rising aspect of the trend: travelers rejecting running from place to place to take hundreds of throwaway photos to instead take up sketching and watercolor painting, as a way to radically slow down and appreciate their destinations.
The TRENDIUM is a compendium of the latest trends impacting the
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