This Travel Company Wants You to Take a Phone-free Vacation — and Has Curated Trips to Italy, Cuba, Portugal, and Mexico

Yes, you can break up with your phone for a few days.

How long do you think you can realistically go without using your phone? A few minutes? An hour? An entire day? FTLO Travel, a group travel company for solo travelers in their mid-20s and 30s, is hoping to help you go an entire vacation without it.

The travel company is launching a new series of "phone-free” international trips taking place through 2024 to help people break free of their phones and fully engage with their adventures.

“In today's digital age, we have become increasingly dependent on our smartphones, and it is negatively impacting our mental well-being and our ability to be present,” Tara Cappel, the company’s founder and CEO, shared in a statement provided to Travel + Leisure. “By removing this distraction, travelers can fully engage with the destination they’re visiting and build new relationships with like-minded trip mates.”

Here’s how it works: trip participants will have to lock away their phones for the duration of the trip. Instead, they will have to rely on things like maps for directions and pocket dictionaries for any translation needs, and, as the company shared, “good old-fashioned conversation for entertainment.”

“With eliminating the reliance on smartphones, our goal is for travelers to have a more immersive and adventurous journey. I hope it encourages them to engage more deeply with both the people and the places they encounter — asking a local shopkeeper for directions, ordering an unfamiliar item from the menu, or simply making more eye contact,” Cappel added. “It's the human interactions and sensory experiences that are the magic of travel. By being more present, I believe cell phone-free trips will foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of the culture they are immersed in, which aligns with FTLO's fundamental mission.”

The phone-free trips include four-day getaways to Havana, Cuba, from Feb. 7 to 11, Costa Rica between April 10 to 13, Portugal from June 16 to 23, Tuscany from Sept. 15 to 22, Iceland from Nov. 6 to 10, and Oaxaca from Dec. 4 to 8.

But don’t worry if you simply cannot part with your phone. FTLO Travel offers more than 250 trips around the globe ranging from four to 11 days, allowing you to scroll in between sights for as long as you’d like. (The company launched three new itineraries for summer 2024: Amsterdam, London, and Iceland.)

Learn more about the phone-free trips at ftlotravel.com. Trips begin at $1,999 per person. 

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