Screen-free hotel in Sweden offering free hotel rooms to social media addicts

The number of social media users worldwide in 2018 reached 3.196 billion, up by 13 percent from the year before. (iStock)

How would you like to get a free hotel room?

Well, of course you would. But, there’s a catch. You can’t brag about it on social media. Actually, you can’t really do very much at all on social media because this hotel room's rate is entirely determined on how addicted you are to Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram...

You get it.

According to Hotel Designs, the number of social media users worldwide in 2018 reached 3.196 billion, up by 13 percent from the year before. Just when you thought everybody was on social media, it turns out the internet is still growing.

That’s why The Check Out Suite in Hotel Bellora, in Gothenburg, Sweden, is designed to help guests totally relax, which includes staying away from the stresses of using social media all the time. Instead, the hotel wants to encourage quality time spent with loved ones and experiencing the world around you, rather than staring at a screen.

Basically, the more you use social media apps, the higher your room rate will be.

The room uses a Skärmfri (Screen-free) smart lamp, which measures how much you pay for the room based on how much time you spend on social media.

"We’re now taking our ‘Screen Help’ concept further in different ways. The Skärmfri lamp was one way to help, but now we have taken it even further and converted screen time into a currency that rewards a healthy digital life,” said Lisa Höglund, Head of Communications at Länsförsäkringar, a Swedish insurance company in collaboration with Hotel Bellora, to Hotel Designs.

Guest connect their phones to the lamp using the room’s WiFi, and from there, the lamp glows white as it measures up to 30 minutes of the recommended time people should be on their phones for recreation, according to studies cited by Hotel Designs.

After that, the lamp starts to glow red, which means guests will have to pay the full price for the room. On the bright side, if you don't use your phone at all, the room is totally free.

For more information, visit the Hotel Bellora website.