REMOTUS

What a week without a signal does to you

Disconnecting is not a passing fashion. It is one of the better-studied ideas in modern psychology. This is what the research shows, and why the Connection Protocol is built the way it is.

What the research shows

+50%on a creativity test

Before the trip100100
After about four days in the wild150150
Creativity test score, indexed to 100 before the trip

Hikers who had spent about four days in the wilderness, with no phones or laptops, scored 50% higher on a creative problem-solving test than people about to set out on the same trip.

Atchley et al., 2012 1

−21%cortisol per hour

  • Normal daily decline 11.7%
  • Extra drop in nature 21.3%
Fall in salivary cortisol per hour

Twenty to thirty minutes in a natural setting lowered the stress hormone cortisol by 21.3% an hour, on top of its normal daily decline.

Hunter et al., 2019 2

90 minin nature

A 90-minute walk through nature, unlike the same walk through a city, reduced rumination, the repetitive negative thinking linked to depression, and quietened the brain region associated with it.

Bratman et al., 2015 3

Out of sightyour phone

Less
  1. Phone on the desk
  2. In a pocket or bag
  3. In another room
More
Attention left for the task, in order

In experiments with nearly 800 people, simply having a smartphone nearby reduced available attention, even when it was switched off. People did best with the phone in another room.

Ward et al., 2017 4

5 dayswithout screens

After five days at a nature camp with no screens, sixth-graders read facial expressions and other nonverbal emotional cues better than classmates who kept their usual screen time.

Uhls et al., 2014 5

120 mina week

In a study of nearly 20,000 people in England, those who spent at least two hours a week in nature were more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those who spent none.

White et al., 2019 6

The studies describe average effects among their participants. Individual results vary, and a Remotus journey is not a medical treatment.

The catch: the effect fades

A meta-analysis of holiday studies found that the gains in health and wellbeing from time off are real, but fade soon after people go back to work. That is why the Connection Protocol does not end on Day 7: a re-entry conversation, a briefing instead of a flood, and follow-ups at 7, 30 and 90 days to hold on to what changed. 7

How the Connection Protocol works

Wellbeing
Day 7Day 30Day 90
BeforeThe weekBack home
  • Usual holiday
  • With the Protocol (our aim)
Illustration of the fade-out described in the research, and where the Protocol steps in

A world that looks more and more the same

Airports, hotel lobbies and coffee shops look increasingly alike from one continent to the next, and the feeds we scroll suggest the same places to everyone. The writer Kyle Chayka calls it Filterworld. The places still worth the journey are the ones the algorithm has not reached. 13

1.4 bninternational tourist arrivals in 2024, back to the 2019 record 8
6 h 38 minspent online every day by the average adult internet user 9
40%+of the world’s 6,700 languages are at risk of disappearing 10
24%of travellers say they now disconnect from social media on holiday more than they used to 11

Wellness tourism, worldwide spending

$651 bn2022
$1.0 tn2024
$1.4 tn2027
  • Actual
  • Projection
Spending on travel taken for wellbeing grew faster than tourism overall between 2020 and 2022, and is forecast to keep growing by 16.6% a year to 2027. 12

Remotus exists for the people who notice this: a week somewhere that looks like nowhere else, with people whose lives do not fit in a feed.

Seven days is long enough to feel it.

Request a journey The protocol

Sources

  1. Atchley RA, Strayer DL, Atchley P. Creativity in the wild: improving creative reasoning through immersion in natural settings. PLoS ONE 7(12): e51474, 2012. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0051474
  2. Hunter MR, Gillespie BW, Chen SY-P. Urban nature experiences reduce stress in the context of daily life based on salivary biomarkers. Frontiers in Psychology 10: 722, 2019. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00722
  3. Bratman GN, Hamilton JP, Hahn KS, Daily GC, Gross JJ. Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. PNAS 112(28): 8567–8572, 2015. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1510459112
  4. Ward AF, Duke K, Gneezy A, Bos MW. Brain drain: the mere presence of one’s own smartphone reduces available cognitive capacity. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2(2): 140–154, 2017. doi.org/10.1086/691462
  5. Uhls YT, Michikyan M, Morris J, et al. Five days at outdoor education camp without screens improves preteen skills with nonverbal emotion cues. Computers in Human Behavior 39: 387–392, 2014. doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.05.036
  6. White MP, Alcock I, Grellier J, et al. Spending at least 120 minutes a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing. Scientific Reports 9: 7730, 2019. doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3
  7. de Bloom J, Kompier M, Geurts S, de Weerth C, Taris T, Sonnentag S. Do we recover from vacation? Meta-analysis of vacation effects on health and well-being. Journal of Occupational Health 51(1): 13–25, 2009. doi.org/10.1539/joh.K8004
  8. UN Tourism. International tourism recovers pre-pandemic levels in 2024. World Tourism Barometer, January 2025. www.untourism.int/News/International-Tourism-Recovers-Pre-Pandemic-Levels-in-2024
  9. DataReportal, We Are Social, Meltwater. Digital 2025 Global Overview Report (GWI data), 2025. datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-sub-section-ever-more-connected
  10. UNESCO. International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022–2032. www.unesco.at/en/cross-sectional-topics/article/unesco-celebrates-the-international-decade-of-indigenous-languages
  11. Hilton. 2025 Trends Report. Ipsos online survey of 13,001 travellers in 13 countries, June 2024. stories.hilton.com/releases/2025-travel-trends-br-eng
  12. Global Wellness Institute. Wellness tourism will cross the $1 trillion mark in 2024. November 2023. globalwellnessinstitute.org/press-room/press-releases/wellness-tourism-will-cross-the-1-trillion-mark-in-2024/
  13. Chayka K. Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. Doubleday, 2024.