You check in, throw open the door, and scan the room for something that isn't there: a television. A decade ago that would have read as a mistake. Today it's a deliberate design choice — and a small but growing number of hotels, mostly along the US West Coast, are quietly pulling the plug.
The reasoning is simple. Guests are glued to screens all day, and hoteliers are betting that an empty wall mount is exactly the permission some travellers need to actually rest. Teresa Raffo, co-owner of Mendocino Cove in Northern California, says people are actively searching for places to switch off. Her property keeps 11 of its rooms entirely screen-free — a compromise that lets detox-minded guests opt in without forcing the choice on everyone else.
Further south in Newport, Oregon, the brand-new Hotel Sylvia has gone fully analog. The site previously held an old literary-themed hotel with no in-room televisions, and guests would spend hours in the shared library, playing games and getting to know each other. The new property, designed with VIDA Design, revives that spirit: rooms are named after authors — Hemingway, Shakespeare, Christie, Angelou — in tribute to Sylvia Beach, with no TVs or phones, plus plenty of 'third spaces' and a calming palette built around the idea of disconnection.
The most famous convert, though, is Big Sur's Post Ranch Inn, which has long skipped televisions and alarm clocks. Co-founder Mike Freed says the absence pushes guests toward the coastline views and each other, not a screen. With the Pacific outside the window, the argument practically makes itself.
The early feedback is positive. Guests at Hotel Sylvia reportedly embrace the quiet, and Raffo notes that rooms feel noticeably more peaceful without a TV — people head outside, read, or actually talk instead of defaulting to Netflix. As smart tech and AI creep into every corner of daily life, some hoteliers expect the analog trend to grow. Freed frames it bluntly: time is the most valuable commodity, and unplugging is how you protect it.
Why should this matter to you? If you book a West Coast stay at any of these properties, know what you're getting — and that a missing TV is a feature, not an oversight. And if your hotel still has one, the screen-free spirit travels: the challenge is to leave the remote untouched and use the pool, the sauna, the pickleball courts, or simply the view instead.
A detail from Sunset.
