Americans Won’t Ditch Phones on Vacation Despite Travel Industry’s Digital Detox Push
Photo Credit: Many travelers dont want to unplug on vacation despite travel brands telling them that they should. Pictured are tourists taking photos with their phones in Times Square in New York City. Skift / Steve Newman
Skift Take
Travel is more accessible today than ever before because of mobile devices and the travel industry knows this. We don't see anything wrong with nudging travelers to look up from their devices every now and then, but promoting a device-free vacation reads a little tone-deaf in 2018.
For all the promotions many travel brands increasingly run on the benefits of doing a digital detox on vacations, many U.S. travelers aren't listening because they're too busy using devices that have become the center of the modern vacation.
That's according to a survey of 2,000 U.S. travelers from Asurion, a mobile device insurance company, and OnePoll, a UK-based marketing research company. More than 20 percent of respondents said they checked their smartphones once per hour during their most recent vacations while about 14 percent said they checked it twice per hour (see chart below).
Nearly 8 percent said they checked it more than 20 times per hour, which seems more plausible given all the reasons why someone would need Internet access during a trip, such as getting directions, checking the weather, or calling a ride.
About two-thirds of respondents were female but the survey was more evenly distributed among travelers ages 18 to 55-plus and by place of residence.
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