In the Swedish city of Gothenburg, Hotel Bellora is promoting its new Check Out Suite, a room with prices that vary depending on the amount of time guests spend on the screen. The room comes equipped with a Skärmfri (screen-free) lamp which measures how much time you spend online. When a guest connects their phone to the lamp using the room’s Wi-Fi, the lamp will glow a particular colour depending on how much time is spent connected—white for the recommended 30 minutes of screen time per day, red for anything over that. If a customer does not go online at all, the room will be free. The room starts at SEK 2400 (NZ $388) but will decrease per screen usage.
US Professor and author of ‘Reclaiming Conversation,’ Sherry Turkle, said she is concerned for people who use social media to dictate their lives, for people “whose self-worth and focus becomes dictated by how they are accepted, wanted, and desired by social media.”
Hotel Bellora’s motto? “The less time—the cheaper the stay. If you let screens be completely free, you will have more time with each other. A win-win, simply.”
