Digital detox in South Tyrol: when your phone fades into the background
A shady spot by the pool, a book already open. A few pages in, your eyes drift towards the water. A few guests are swimming lengths. Others are talking quietly. Somewhere, a glass clinks. The sun moves slowly across the garden; clouds gather for a moment, then pass.
Only much later do you realise that hours have passed. No messages read, no photographs taken, nothing shared. And yet, you have missed nothing.
Your phone is still in your room because, right now, real life is more interesting than the screen.
A break from the digital world
Digital detox can sound like switching off completely. It brings to mind aeroplane mode, being unreachable and a firm resolve not to check your phone for as long as possible. Yet a more mindful relationship with digital media does not need to be radical to do us good. Studies suggest that temporarily reducing smartphone and social media use may support attention, wellbeing, sleep and the quality of our relationships. The evidence is nuanced, however. Less screen time alone is not enough to make a holiday restorative.
What matters is what fills the space it leaves behind.
At Hohenwart, no one has to be offline. There is no ban on phones and no need to feel guilty about checking yours. Instead, there are moments throughout the day when it simply slips from your mind, because something else has captured your attention.
Returning to the present
In everyday life, our attention is often pulled in several directions at once. A message appears before the previous task is finished. Our thoughts jump between appointments, conversations and open browser tabs. On holiday, time can move differently for a while. More slowly.
During yoga, attention returns to breath and movement. For a while, what comes next matters less than how a posture feels in that moment. Quiet settles in the sauna. Floating in the panoramic infinity saltwater pool on the VistaSpa rooftop terrace, you feel the water take your weight as your gaze travels across Schenna to the mountains beyond.
A treatment offers the same freedom from interruption. During a 75-minute Lomi Lomi Nui massage, it is particularly easy to lose track of time. Slow, gentle touch and long, flowing strokes leave little room for thoughts about the time or whatever may be waiting in your inbox. Nothing to decide, nothing to answer and, for a while, nothing to achieve.
Sometimes no ritual is needed. A sauna session, a few unhurried lengths in the pool or a spot in the garden may be enough. Being present is not about trying especially hard to concentrate. It simply means being fully where you are.
A book waiting in your room
Reading is another form of undivided attention. On a screen, the next message, link or notification is always ready to claim your attention. A book stays with one story.
Mrs. Christine, one of your hosts at Hohenwart, is an avid reader. She has created a library at the hotel, where guests are welcome to borrow books. At the start of each season, she also puts together a personal reading list of favourite books, often including works by South Tyrolean authors that offer a literary perspective on the region.
You can choose a book from Christine’s reading list before you travel and reserve it for your stay. It will be waiting in your room when you arrive. A small digital step that leads to hours with a book: by the pool, on the terrace, in the garden or back in your room at the end of the day.
Looking up instead of scrolling
Not every free minute needs to be filled. Not even with yoga, a treatment or a good book. A restful holiday also means being free to have nothing planned for a while.
Perhaps you lie by the pool and watch the light sparkle on the water. One swimmer eases into a tentative first length while another moves through the water in a steady rhythm. Conversations begin and fall quiet again. Morning becomes afternoon without your quite noticing.
This is mindfulness at its most effortless. Not an exercise to get right, simply time that does not have to be put to immediate use.
Real connection needs no signal
Perhaps the loveliest counterpoint to constant digital connection is not silence at all. It is the people who happen to be right there with you.
At Hohenwart, these encounters tend to happen naturally. You might strike up a conversation with another guest on a guided walk with Hubert. There is plenty to see and talk about along the way, with pauses that leave room for both. When you meet again at one of Roland’s guided sauna infusions, you recognise each other and perhaps arrange to join Stefan’s circuit training class together. By the time you sit next to one another at a wine tasting with Peter, you are laughing together over stories from the day.
Guided walks, exercise classes, sauna infusions and tastings all create opportunities to connect. A walk begins the first conversation. At the next class, a familiar face becomes someone you know. Over a glass of wine, there is time to carry on talking, and perhaps a friendship begins that lasts well beyond the holiday.
Online, we can be connected to many people at once. On holiday, it can feel surprisingly good to give one person your full attention.
When work comes along too
Being completely unreachable is not possible for everyone all of the time. Sometimes an email needs answering, a document needs printing or there is an hour’s work that simply cannot wait. None of this has to disturb the rest of your holiday.
At Hohenwart, there is no need to turn the breakfast table or a poolside lounger into an office. Tucked away in a quiet part of the hotel, our guest office is spacious and filled with natural light. It is equipped with a desktop computer, keyboard, mouse, docking station and printer. It is free to use and can be reserved at reception, where you will receive access for the time you have booked.
This gives work a place and a time of its own. When you are finished, the door closes. The laptop can stay in your room, and the holiday can take over again.
Perhaps this is the most realistic form of a digital break: not pretending that obligations do not exist, but choosing when to give them your attention. And when not to.
A day that did not need documenting
By evening, your phone is still where you left it that morning. The messages are still there. But the day is no less real because it was not photographed, shared and commented on as it unfolded.
What remains is the quiet satisfaction after a walk or workout, the warmth of the sauna, a few pages of a story and laughter shared with people who were still strangers that morning. Perhaps you reach for your phone now. Or perhaps a little later.
Nothing was captured. Yet so much remains.
The place that lasts.