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Social media is eating up hours of vacation time

If you don't post it online, did it ever really happen?

We’ve certainly grown accustomed to cell phone zombies over the past few weeks thanks to a little pocket monster named Pikachu. But when it comes to worldwide travel, Canadians may have been turning on their autopilot for a lot longer than the lifespan of Pokémon Go.

These days it’s easy to use smartphones for everything from booking a hotel or making a restaurant reservation to downloading local maps and finding out how long the line is to get into a popular attraction. Too easy, perhaps, given a recent survey released by travel website Hotels.com, which revealed that 75 per cent of Canadians admit to spending nearly two-and-a-half hours on social media daily while they’re away.

“It’s actually distracting people,” says Hotels.com travel expert Taylor L. Cole, who has close to a decade of experience in the industry. “They’re not connecting with their loved ones, their family or even with the destination they’re in because they’re so busy trying to post on social media.”

The company’s mobile tracker survey took more than 9,000 responses from 31 countries into account before releasing their data. Not surprisingly, they found that many of these social media addicts – 20 to 36 per cent – post photos or status updates just to make their friends jealous or to show off. It’s a growing trend that hotels worldwide are beginning to note.

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If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em

With many people now looking for free hotel Wi-Fi as one of the key requirements before booking a stay, customer service teams are hopping on the social media bandwagon like never before.

“Twitter concierge,” where customers can request everyday items like a fresh towel, are gaining in popularity, while some hotel chains are even creating special filters for apps like Snapchat or Instagram. It may seem counterintuitive to solicit that kind of feedback via social media rather than through good old-fashioned customer service, but according to Cole it’s a strategy that can actually lead to an overall smoother stay.

“The hotel can fix any problems right away, rather than having to wait until they get that comment card at the end of the stay,” she explains. “Sometimes people just won’t say anything, and so hotels are using social media to try and get feedback right at the time that it happens. That way they can make some changes earlier in that process.”

One business basic that remains the same is the not-so-novel concept of word of mouth. Although the medium has changed, feedback remains integral when it comes to repeat and new business; the survey also revealed Canadians rely heavily on restaurant and tourist attraction reviews when they’re travelling. Plus, roughly 37 per cent of us use reviews to make last minute hotel bookings on the day of our stay.

“Social media is influencing those decisions,” Cole adds. “When you get an idea or see that someone has got a great deal on travel, people want to take advantage of that right away. We just don’t want to make a bad choice. That’s time wasted when you don’t have that much time during your vacation. The feedback and the authentic feedback from other customers who have been there is important.”

Take time away for yourself

When you finally do take that hard-earned vacation, however, it can be equally important to enjoy your experiences with the people you’re with. Detox vacations, in which patrons specifically put away their cell phones at check-in and don’t pick them back up until check-out are gaining in popularity, with Destination Canada even recently teaming with Bell Media to invite millennials – the highest users of social media while on vacation – to unplug with a special Far and Wide webisode featuring Much personality Liz Trinnear doing just that.

“It was definitely a situation of like, ghost phone syndrome where I felt like it was vibrating in my pocket and it wasn’t because it wasn’t there,” Trinnear, who ditched her phone for four days during a trip to Tofino, B.C. says. “It’s kind of ridiculous that we are photographing everything just to share it, whereas we’re not taking it in for just ourselves.”

With Canadians ranking third-last in the number of paid vacation days allotted per year, it certainly seems as though we may want to soak it all in while we can.

“Sixty-six per cent of Canadian respondents said they preferred to travel with their mobile device over their loved ones. People are going to those destinations but they are on their phones the whole time,” Cole wraps. “They’re missing the experience, the shoulder-to-shoulder conversations with their friends and instead they’re busy on the phone while they should be enjoying the sights.”

And no, that probably doesn’t include the newest Pokemon Go stop.