Trend: Not Just Digital Detox, But Analog Travel
More hotels and resorts are channeling the zeitgeist and offering retro, pre-digital (even pre-industrial!) tech, hobbies, arts and crafts that restore what our screen-based lives have stolen from us: the social, our radical attention, the tactile and real. Think vinyl record “deep listening” sauna sessions and sophisticated arts and crafts programming … more blacksmithing than biohacking.
Our new 2025 trend “Analog Wellness” argues that the online world’s relentless manipulations, marketing, disinformation and division campaigns, and general brain and culture rotting, have now gone too far. We argue that 2025 will be the year that more people get aggressive about logging off, in life and in travel. Digital detox vacations—where phones are locked up or properties have no to little Wi-Fi—have been growing in popularity for years, and now even more so. Digital detox travel has become so mainstream that it was comically represented as a de rigueur (if not enforced) policy at the Thai wellness resort in this week’s episode of the new season of The White Lotus.
We explore a newer travel trend in which more hotels and resorts are not only helping people log off, but also helping them “analog-on”. This means experimenting with old-school, pre-digital tech and tools, and all kinds of arts and crafts, and analog experiences, to fill the digital void. It’s been well-covered how younger gens globally have been obsessed with analog tech: retro cameras, vinyl listening bars, dumbphones, vintage typewriters, paper books, analog over smart watches … you name it. Our trend dives into the incredible growth in structured, super-social analog clubs and communities where people are meeting to craft, read, play, listen to music, and learn with others—from social ceramics clubs, to reading parties set to live music, to old-school board game playing clubs. These new, grassroots analog “salons” are remaking night life and the very idea of wellness, and giving wellness businesses competition as the new “third spaces.”
The wellness world should pay attention to these new spaces and their viral momentum. The travel sector is starting to listen, and an analog travel trend is taking various forms:
Analog tech experiments. More tour companies are creating analog adventures, like FLTO’s trips, where your phone is locked up but you’re given retro tools like printed maps, pocket dictionaries and old-school alarm clocks. The cool, new digital detox nature cabins, like the UK’s Unplugged, give guests paper maps, Polaroid cameras, books, games, and Nokia dumbphones for emergencies. Vinyl listening bars are the rage worldwide, but wellness resorts are making them more profound experiences. At Norway’s Farris Bad spa resort, the always sold-out “Deep Listening Sauna Sessions” have guests steaming, plunging into the icy ocean, and then experiencing a group audio meditation, where everyone takes in a complete album from a classic artist, whether Miles Davis or Fleetwood Mac.
More sophisticated arts and crafts programming. Wellness resorts have long dabbled in analog arts and crafts classes, but if they once felt a little fusty, they now feel hipper. More destinations are now offering painting, ceramics, embroidery, calligraphy and writing workshops. The famed Royal Mansour in Marrakesh specializes in the arts as wellness therapy, like embroidery, clay modeling, calligraphy, and more. Lake Austin Spa Resort in Texas has a “Creative Rx” program, with classes in painting, paper crafting, journaling, basket weaving and jewelry making. More retreats are dedicated to analog arts and crafts, from Fair Isle With Marie offering knitting holidays on a wild island in Scotland, to Artful Retreats in Crete blending art therapy workshops (from painting to clay-working) with sound baths and yoga.
Not only pre-digital, but pre-industrial pursuits. We hear so much about high-tech longevity clinics, but more wellness resorts in the future will be modeled after centuries-old working farm estates, because people aren’t just seeking pre-digital pursuits, they’re fascinated by positively pre-industrial experiences. At Portugal’s Viceroy at Ombria Algarve artisans teach you ancient grass weaving, ceramics, and honey harvesting—and you can even work as a shepherd for a day, driving the flocks home. The South African hotel Babylonstoren has opened Soetmelksvlei, a perfectly restored 17th-century farm/resort where you can learn blacksmithing, milking and cream separation, leather working, carpentry and wheat milling.
The analog tech and experiences trend is no passing fad. It suddenly feels less like trendy nostalgia than an activist movement to create a “retro future” restoring all that we’ve lost in a fast-rotting digital world: the human, touch, our focus, and creating over scrolling. We expect hotels and resorts will go deeper than offering kits with Polaroid cameras and paper maps, and that “analog wellness” will be more aspirational than coming AI-driven varieties.
Analog travel is just one aspect of our “Analog Wellness” trend, which goes in depth on how this movement will shake up tech, wellness, government policy, even real estate and home design. Purchase the 2025 report here.
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