The digital revolution as some call it has brought many benefits and conveniences to people worldwide. It has certainly made travel easier and, in many ways, more interesting. Travel destinations can be explored on smartphones, information combed, and bookings made. Digital devices have unchained business people from their desks and allowed real-time communications through many online channels.

There can be little doubting that many people just love their phones. However, there is mounting evidence that using smartphones is addictive and that it can harm a persons mental and physical health. An article in The Wall Street Journal suggests that smartphone use lowers ones intellect (Carr 2017). Chang (2017) identifies the following eight (8) dangers of excessive phone use:

Injuries and accidents
Posture-related disorders
Screen fatigue
Reduced attention span
Sleeping problems
Disconnection with friends and family
Identity theft
Damage to the spine and neck
So, digital devices have their good and bad sides for people, and we can call this a digital dilemma. Undoubtedly, this device overuse is becoming a greater social and medical problem, as well as raising many human resource management issues in workplaces. Taking a somewhat more focused view, however, in what ways does this digital dilemma impact travel and travel flows?

In answering this question, one interesting opportunity that has arisen for destinations and tourism operators is the detox offer. Here, for a price, visitors or guests give up their smartphones and other digital devices for a day, weekend, or longer. For example, the Westin Paris Vendme offers detoxers the following invitation:

In these times of hyper-connectivity, The Westin Paris- Vendme proposes an extraordinary offer. As soon as you arrive, you will be invited to deposit your mobile phones, tablets, laptops and other devices in a safe at the front-office. Then, the hotel has prepared plenty of nice surprises to indulge yourself, clear your mind, relax, in other words: revitalize yourself!

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan, New York, offers a Digital Wellness Escape for $255-345 with spa treatments Concentrating on the head, eyes, neck, shoulders, hands and feet, this restorative treatment aims to ease the stress and strain resulting from the frequent use of digital devices.

In addition to hotels and spas, some tour operators are also offering digital detox vacations and holidays. For example, Intrepid Travel (2017) is offering a nine-day Vietnam Active Family Holiday Digital Detox with this call to action:

Log off, shut down and disconnect from tech on this nine-day adventure through Vietnam. Forget the perfect filter or condensing your journey into 140 characters this is your time to reconnect with the world around you.

Unplugged Weekends is another company offering short-break retreats that focus on living without ones digital devices. They were featured on a BBC documentary in 2014 about digital detoxing.

In summary, while many tourism marketers are encouraging people to make greater use of digital devices when traveling, others are inviting visitors to enjoy travel without their cherished tools.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

Why do you believe people take digital detox breaks like those described above?
Would you take a digital detox holiday or vacation? Why or why not?
Is digital detoxing a short-term trend? Or is it destined to become a permanent aspect of society? What are the reasons behind your opinions on this question?
How can destinations and tourism businesses take full advantage of this counter-technology trend?

Bleisure is not a word to be found in any dictionary yet, but despite this it is a hot trend in tourism. It can be defined as a combination of business and leisure travel. Whereas tourism statisticians prefer to put visitors in neat boxes, the growing numbers of bleisure travelers are bound to confound the number-counters by blurring the boundaries between market segments.

The following are some of the likely reasons for the popularity of bleisure trips:

Time poverty
A concept liked by millennials
Someone else is paying for the trip (or most of it)
People may not return to the same destinations
Family can be brought along
See more of the world and gain greater knowledge
Have more and different cultural experiences
Two research studies have been completed on bleisure travel and are listed in the sources. The research by BridgeStreet Global Hospitality (2014) found that 60 percent of respondents had taken bleisure trips and another 20 percent intended to. The remaining 20 percent cited a lack of time to fit in bleisure travel. Some 46 percent add pleasure travel days on every or most trips. The major reason for having bleisure trips is to get cultural experiences and new knowledge. More than half (54 percent) of bleisure trips are taken with family members or significant others.

The Carlson Wagonlit Travel study (CWT Solutions Group, 2016) discovered that 46 percent of pleasure travel days are taken at the end of business trips, 34 percent at the trip starts and 20 percent during business trips. It also finds that younger and female business travelers are more likely to engage in bleisure travel. Frequent business travelers are less likely. The propensity to take bleisure trips increased with the distance traveled.

The bleisure idea seems to fit well with the trend for people to want authentic experiences of the cities and other places they visit, even when on business trips. These trips also seem quite compatible with using sharing economy providers such as Airbnb, Uber, and VizEat that allow closer connections with local people and communities.

Bleisure may be more of a new name for a concept rather than a new development in travel. In fact, it has been happening for several decades.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

How do you feel the bleisure trend will affect travel flows in your country(My country is China)?
How should destinations take fullest advantage of the tendency to take bleisure trips?
The research indicates that millennial and other younger travelers are more likely to engage in bleisure travel. Who do you think that is so?
Should companies encourage their employees to take bleisure trips? Why or why not?