Is Time Without a Smartphone Becoming the New Luxury?

Imagine a guest beside a remarkable view. Breakfast has arrived and the family is together. Yet one phone vibrates, another records the moment and a third brings work into the room.

This scene is so familiar that we rarely question it. Hotels have spent years making the guest journey more connected and convenient. Mobile check-in, digital keys, messaging platforms and QR-code menus are designed to remove friction. But if every moment remains open to work, alerts and digital demands, what exactly has the guest escaped from?

This is not an argument against smartphones. They are useful and, for many guests, essential. The more useful question is whether luxury hospitality should help guests recover control over time and attention: the freedom to connect when needed and step away without losing necessary services.

When time becomes the rarest amenity

A guest may reach the resort while the mind remains in meetings, messages and unfinished tasks. The body has travelled, while attention has not. Luxury cannot solve that problem simply by adding more amenities.

Rudd et al. (2019) reviewed three decades of research on time and meaning. They treat time as a precious, finite resource and organise research on how people spend and construe it around three dimensions of meaning: purpose, mattering and comprehension. Their review does not show that hotels create meaning. It raises a practical design question: does a stay leave room for a guest to be fully present, or fill every pause with another prompt, activity or transaction?

Research by Whillans and colleagues adds a practical layer. Across surveys in four countries, time-saving purchases were associated with greater life satisfaction; in a preregistered within-subjects field experiment, such a purchase improved daily mood partly by lowering perceived time pressure (Whillans et al., 2017). In a separate preregistered longitudinal study, graduates who valued time over money were more likely to pursue intrinsically motivated activities and reported greater well-being one year later (Whillans et al., 2019). These are not hotel studies, but they suggest a service-design principle: value can come from giving time back, not only from adding things.

Malone et al. (2023) bring the argument closer to luxury tourism. At a luxury ecocamp in Kenya, the reappropriation of time was central to the transformational effects participants described and occurred through appreciation, learning and rediscovery. The study used a small, context-specific sample, so its findings should not be generalised to hotel guests broadly. It does, however, raise a useful hypothesis: some luxury guests may value experiences that let them experience time differently.

The smartphone is not the enemy

Protected attention should not become a fashionable argument for banning phones. Tourism research shows why.

Using cross-sectional survey data from 304 working adults in Beijing and Shanghai, Kirillova and Wang (2016) found that more frequent work-related smartphone-facilitated social presence weakened the relationship between destination restorative qualities and vacation recovery, while higher-quality work-related and non-work social presence strengthened it. The findings therefore do not support a simple connected-versus-disconnected rule: the relationship differed by frequency, quality and context.

Egger et al. (2020) add a related caution. In exploratory interviews with 17 digital-native young adults who had voluntarily experienced digital-free travel, four motivations emerged: escape, personal growth, health and well-being, and relationships. Participants were not generally hostile to technology and still described practical uses for safety, navigation and family contact. This small, purposive study supports a distinction between voluntarily limiting technology and rejecting it altogether.

That word - choosing - matters. Reviewing 76 papers, Marx et al. (2025) found inconsistent definitions and study designs around "digital detox". Their framework distinguishes intentionality, time frame, action, technology, driver and outcome; their consolidated definition requires an intentionally set period in which use of one or more devices or applications is reduced. Within that framing, a forced phone ban is not equivalent to voluntary digital restraint. For a carer, a guest with accessibility needs or someone awaiting important news, being forced offline may feel less like luxury and more like losing control.

The point is not to remove technology. It is to give the guest authority over it.

From constant connection to considerate connectivity

Hotels do not need to choose between digital convenience and human presence. They need to move from constant connectivity to considerate connectivity.

By considerate connectivity, I mean technology that is available when needed, but quiet when it adds no value. A digital key that removes a queue may give time back. Five notifications during dinner take it away. A messaging service may solve a problem quickly. Repeated demands to scan, download, register and authenticate may move operational work from the hotel to the guest.

Attention is not an abstract wellness idea. In a preregistered restaurant field experiment, Dwyer et al. (2018) assigned groups to keep phones on the table or put them away during a meal. Participants in the phone condition felt more distracted and reported lower enjoyment. A second preregistered experience-sampling study found a similar pattern during other face-to-face interactions. The effects were relatively small, and neither study establishes a hotel-wide effect. They do provide evidence that smartphone-related distraction can reduce enjoyment in some social encounters.

The managerial question is simple: does this touchpoint return time and attention to the guest, or quietly claim both?

What this means for hotel managers

These ideas are most relevant to luxury and experience-focused hotels; their value in other segments still needs testing. Four practical shifts are worth considering.

Give guests real choice. Offer physical and digital keys, printed information on request and an option to pause non-essential messages. During spa treatments or selected activities, secure phone storage can be offered, never imposed. Luxury lies in control, not prohibition.

Create phone-light moments. A tasting, guided walk, dinner or sunset ritual can invite guests to put devices aside briefly. The invitation should remain tactful and optional. Staff can protect the pace by knowing when not to interrupt and when a guest would prefer human help to another digital instruction.

Use technology to give time back. Audit every notification, form, QR code and app journey. Does it shorten a process, prevent repetition or reduce uncertainty? Or does it ask the guest to do work the hotel once handled? Digital sophistication should be judged partly by how little attention it demands.

Test what guests regain. Hotels already track response times, app use, satisfaction and spending. They could also test perceived time pressure, restoration, social interaction, uptake of phone-light experiences and repeat preference. Different segments may respond differently. Small trials are more useful than turning a complex need into a slogan.

None of this requires a technologically sparse hotel. The most thoughtful technology may be the technology that asks least of the guest.

So, is time without a smartphone becoming the new luxury? Not exactly. The phone is not the opposite of luxury, and disconnection is not automatically restorative.

The deeper luxury may be control: knowing one can connect when necessary, withdraw without difficulty and experience a moment without feeling it must be answered, recorded or optimised.

Hotels do not need to ask guests to disconnect from the world. They need to create experiences worth being fully present for.

References

• Dwyer, R. J., Kushlev, K., & Dunn, E. W. (2018). Smartphone use undermines enjoyment of face-to-face social interactions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 78, 233-239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2017.10.007

• Egger, I., Lei, S. I., & Wassler, P. (2020). Digital free tourism - An exploratory study of tourist motivations. Tourism Management, 79, Article 104098. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104098

• Kirillova, K., & Wang, D. (2016). Smartphone (dis)connectedness and vacation recovery. Annals of Tourism Research, 61, 157-169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2016.10.005

• Malone, S., Tynan, C., & McKechnie, S. (2023). Unconventional luxury: The reappropriation of time and substance. Journal of Business Research, 163, Article 113939. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113939

• Marx, J., Mirbabaie, M., & Turel, O. (2025). Digital detox: A theoretical framework and future research directions for information systems. Information & Management, 62(1), Article 104068. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2024.104068

• Rudd, M., Catapano, R., & Aaker, J. (2019). Making time matter: A review of research on time and meaning. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 29(4), 680-702. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1087

• Whillans, A. V., Dunn, E. W., Smeets, P., Bekkers, R., & Norton, M. I. (2017). Buying time promotes happiness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 114(32), 8523-8527. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706541114

• Whillans, A. V., Macchia, L., & Dunn, E. W. (2019). Valuing time over money predicts happiness after a major life transition: A preregistered longitudinal study of graduating students. Science Advances, 5(9), Article eaax2615. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax2615