How sober travellers and alcohol-free travel companies are driving a new tourism trend as people look for richer experiences unclouded by booze
- Travel companies such as Hooked, We Love Lucid and Safari Guru are catering to a growing number of travellers choosing to eschew alcohol when taking holidays
- Hotels, cruise companies and even airlines are also responding to the trend, offering zero-proof cocktails and activity suggestions that don’t involve alcohol
Akash Raman, a 35-year-old advertising professional in Bangalore, India remembers his late teens and 20s as a time spent drinking in bars and of holidays taken in an alcoholic daze.
Two years ago, feeling low, he decided to stop drinking. He then took his first trek, in the Himalayas, with some like-minded friends. He had never enjoyed a better holiday, he says. He was mindful and felt in the moment, without anything clouding his brain.
“Alcohol and drinking are highly overrated and a social pressure,” Raman says. “When you get out of that loop, you realise there is much more to life and quality experiences to be had.”
For many of us, holidays are synonymous with alcohol. It also flows freely in celebration of joyous events or to help us through stress or rough phases in life.
Travel tends to involve the sampling of local wines and spirits, cocktails poolside – and hangovers. Boozy festivals such as Mardi Gras, in the US, and Oktoberfest, in Munich, Germany, only reinforce the idea that alcohol is a part of experiencing something new.
But that is changing, with an increasing number of adults across the world becoming “sober curious”, according to John Holmes, professor of alcohol policy at the University of Sheffield, in Britain. These are not people in recovery or who have an addiction problem – who have been long catered for by companies such as Sober Vacations International, which was founded in 1987 – but simply those re-examining their relationship with alcohol.
