Check-In, Switch-Off: Ruwaida Abela Northen On Whether We Can Really Ever Relax On Holiday
The annual summer escape is no longer just about where we go, but how we switch off. Ruwaida Abela Northen explores the rise of restorative travel and our growing desire to truly unwind
There was a time when travel meant escape. You packed a suitcase, set an out-of-office, boarded a flight and disappeared into another version of yourself for a week or two. The holiday glow was measured in tan lines, terrible airport purchases and how well you ignored your inbox. Today, travel feels different. People are travelling to feel something again. Somewhere between global uncertainty, burnout disguised as ambition, endless notifications and the strange emotional fatigue of modern life, travel has evolved from luxury into necessity. A far more primal human sense of needing to reconnect with ourselves before we completely short-circuit.
And yet, paradoxically, we now travel harder than ever. Holidays are a production. We document them into submission. Entire itineraries are curated around lighting, outfits and restaurant reservations made six months in advance, because someone on TikTok said the pistachio pasta was OMG life-changing. Spoiler alert: it is not.
Travel has gotten easier and harder at the same time. Visas arrive on your phone now. Routes are denser than a decade ago. A journey that used to need two stops is direct. It has also stopped being purely a luxury – people travel for work, for family, to keep themselves from going stale. But the system has become genuinely fragile. A closed airspace, a cancelled route, a flare-up two countries over and the choreography unravels. A butterfly flaps its wings in Singapore, and the winds are felt in Toronto. Anyone working in this industry will tell you the same thing: the more connected we get, the more easily it all breaks.
Luxury travel, in particular, has shifted. The most coveted thing in hospitality is silence. Space. Privacy. A hotel that understands you don’t want another “immersive activation” at 8am involving sound bowls and fermented mushrooms. Sometimes the dream is simply a perfectly made coffee, crisp sheets, no children screaming at breakfast (mine included) and absolutely nobody asking you to scan a QR code.
The irony is that the more connected the world becomes, the more people crave disconnection. Resorts now sell digital detoxes to guests who physically panic when their phone battery drops below 85 per cent (guilty). Wellness retreats have become the new nightclubs. Sleep has become a status symbol, with everyone flaunting their recorded sleep hours like a badge of honour, even though they don’t actually feel rested. And, somewhere along the way, “doing nothing” became aspirational again.
I’d have more credibility however if I actually practised what I preached. My husband and I are both hoteliers, which means a relaxing holiday for us requires a kind of conscious discipline: we try not to notice things. We don’t always succeed. On a holiday in the Seychelles, I once looked up from my book to find my husband, in full snorkel gear in our villa pool, armed with a toothbrush, scrubbing the tiles. In his professional opinion, they needed the help. I have to keep reminding him somewhat lovingly – through gritted teeth – that he is not in fact being paid to audit this hotel.
You can see it everywhere if you’re paying attention. People stay longer. Itineraries loosen. Booking requests have shifted from “the place with the six-month waitlist” to “somewhere the locals actually go.” We’re travelling for how a place feels, not how it photographs – which, frankly, is a relief for everyone in the business. What people are really chasing is the small, slightly ridiculous luxury of feeling awake in their own lives for a few uninterrupted days. Some of us, admittedly, just have to put the toothbrush down first.
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From the Harper’s Bazaar Arabia July / August 2026 issue