Would you pay $1,200 a night for a room that lets you kill the internet?
A swanky German spa hotel doesn't trust you to turn all of your iDevices off on your own, so it's doing what it can to make you disconnect and relax while you're within its expensive walls. Each bed in the Villa Stéphanie resort in Baden-Baden has a silver switch within arm's reach, and flipping it activates a copper grid in the walls that kills the internet in the room, making it impossible for you to respond to texts, scroll through your emails or swipe right on that guy who eyeballed you in the treatment room.
Frank Marrenbach, the CEO of the Oetker Collection which owns Villa Stéphanie and other high-end luxury hotels, says that the grid can block up to 96% of internet signals, basically turning your room into a fortress of relaxation. (Or boredom.) Marrenbach says that, so far, about half of the hotel's guests have opted to flip that switch at least once during their stays. He told the Financial Times
It is not a sign of smartness to constantly look at incoming messages. This is not smart, this is stupid. Smart is to devote time when it is time to do so. Smart is to read things in a profound way.
Um, reading the summary of the Orange is the New Black episode I'm about to watch is profound, Frank. But guests at the Villa Stéphanie resort are paying €1,115 ($1,243) per night for a spa package, so every minute spent on the internet is basically 86 cents worth of luxury that they're wasting — and for that price, the hotel should provide an employee who will personally pull each guest's iPad out of their hands.
Marrenbach says that he expects that technology to appear in luxury homes within the next five years, but so far, it seems that the Villa Stéphanie is the only hotel that has gone to that extreme. Why? Because everyone loves the internet. According to one TripAdvisor survey, hotel guests rated free in-room Wi-Fi as the most appealing amenity that a property could provide, ranking it ahead of free parking, free breakfast and free Wi-Fi in the lobby. The website Hotel Wi-Fi Test has an active community of users who keep track of which chains – and which countries – have the best free Wi-Fi, and Marriott (which is the top rated U.S. hotel on that list) has just started streaming Netflix in the guest rooms.
It's all a matter of preference, I guess, whether being away from home means staying connected or flipping that silver switch by the bed. Either way, you'll eventually get to those emails. And get back to swiping right.