The Disconnection Economy™: Why "Less" Is Becoming Hospitality's Biggest Opportunity

Recently, a hotel owner we work with mentioned that her guests had stopped asking the usual question: “What is there to do around here?” Instead, they were asking where they could walk, where they could read, where they could sit and let an afternoon go by without a plan.

We have a family from Denmark here this week. They value the farm, nature, freshly prepared food, and the connection that comes from the conversations around the dinner table.  

Beth Kennett, Co-Owner, Liberty Hill Farm & Inn

Rochester, Vermont

It was a nuance that presented itself with subtlety. But we kept hearing versions of it from other owners, and the pattern held often enough that it seemed worth naming.

The name we have been using is the Disconnection Economy™.

What is the Disconnection Economy?

The Disconnection Economy is the growing market of travelers who will pay a premium for stays where technology recedes, so that place, people, and rest can take its place. The appeal is control over when and how connection happens, rather than the removal of technology altogether. That's the phrase our agency has begun using to describe a shift we've watched play out across our hospitality clients.

The logic underneath it is plain. Most of us now live inside a more or less constant stream of information. Work, news, money, relationships, and small daily decisions all run through a screen. Against that background, uninterrupted attention and unstructured time have become genuinely scarce.  

But scarcity is what tends to create value.  

A quiet morning with no notifications is worth more to a lot of people than it was ten years ago, precisely because it has gotten harder to come by.

A segment of travelers has started to treat disconnection as something worth paying for, rather than a sacrifice.

What’s Driving the Disconnection Economy?

First-party data from the companies with the most visibility into how people actually book reveal the same insights: genuine opportunities for digital disconnection are in high demand.

Hilton's 2026 Trends Report, based on a survey of 14,000 travelers across 14 countries, found that the most common reason people gave for leisure travel in the year ahead was to rest and recharge (56% of participants), with time in nature and improving mental health close behind. Hilton gave the quiet end of this its own label: hushpitality, for guests looking to turn the volume down.

Booking.com's tenth annual Travel Predictions, drawn from nearly 30,000 travelers across 33 countries, found that 43% would travel specifically to feel closer to the natural world, a figure that climbed to 81% among Gen Z, and that a quarter were taking up quieter hobbies while away. One of the company's own experts described seeking out places without Wi-Fi or mobile signal as something that has moved from a want to a need.

Expedia's Unpack '26 report, built on first-party data and 24,000 travelers, named reading retreats a defining trend of the year, with 91% saying they wanted a getaway centered on reading and rest. The same report found 84% expressing interest in staying on or near a farm. And on Airbnb, searches for stays near US national parks rose 35 percent, a bigger jump than any city or beach destination.

None of these findings are exactly the same trend. But together, they point in one direction, and that direction has been consistent for more than a year. Together, they’re reason enough to consider these shifts more than just a seasonal novelty.  

How We’re Turning Fragmented Trends into a Unified Market

Almost everyone has noticed this shift.  

Hilton frames the wider mood as the “whycation” and the quiet slice of it as hushpitality. Expedia talks about reading retreats. Elsewhere you'll find calm-cations, quiet-cations, sleep tourism, digital detox, and slow travel, each with its own following.

Every one of those labels captures a piece of this phenomenon. The Disconnection Economy is intended to provide what’s missing: a single business frame that lets an operator treat this as a market they can serve, price, and build for, instead of a mood they keep reading about in separate reports.

What the Disconnection Economy is NOT

The Disconnection Economy is not digital detox as a gimmick. Renaming an ordinary room a “detox package” and taking the television off the wall doesn't create the experience.  

It is not isolation, and it is not the absence of technology. Guests in this market still expect a website that works, a booking process that doesn't fight them, accurate pre-arrival information, and easy help when they need it.  

What they want is for the technology to do its job and then get out of the way.

It is emphatically not poor connectivity. A weak signal a guest didn't choose is friction. Quiet a guest did choose is a feature. The two can look similar from the outside and feel completely different once you're standing in it—exactly where a lot of well-meaning properties go wrong.

Who Does the Disconnection Economy Serve?

It's tempting to picture a single kind of traveler here, probably an affluent wellness guest at a remote lodge. The research doesn't support that tidiness.

The pull toward stepping back from screens shows up across segments and age groups, including younger travelers, who are often assumed to want the opposite. Booking.com's own numbers put Gen Z interest in nature-focused travel higher than the overall average, not lower.  

However, the amount and kind of disconnection people want varies widely.  

A family with young kids, a remote worker who still has to log on Monday, a couple marking an anniversary, and a solo traveler chasing better sleep are all after different things. A few want a full week off the grid. Most want more say over when they connect, not a hard switch.  

A word of caution: a property that markets to everyone who wants to unplug will end up speaking to almost no one.

What This Means for Hotels

If there's a real opportunity here, and we think there is, it won't be won by the property with the longest amenities list. It'll be won by the ones that can make a guest feel the quiet before they've booked, and then deliver something worth the trip once they arrive.

That turns out to be two separate problems...

The first is a story problem: how do you describe an experience built largely out of absences—no televisions, no schedule, limited signal—without making it sound like a lack?  

The second is stranger: how do you market an analog experience through entirely digital means?  

We'll tackle those one at a time in the next two articles.  

For now, the takeaway is simpler—and more actionable than any forecast. Some of your guests have started asking for less. Less noise. Less obligation. Less screen time. The opportunity isn't simply to offer that experience; it's to communicate it clearly enough that the right people know it exists.

Coming Next...

We'll explore one of hospitality's biggest storytelling challenges: how to communicate an experience defined not by what it includes, but by what it intentionally leaves behind. Join our mailing list to be the first to read it.