Travellers pick smartphones over loved ones

According to a recent study, most of us would rather spend our holiday staring at the screen of the smartphone – in fact a whopping 64 per cent of us would.

Only 42 per cent of would prefer to spend time abroad with our nearest and dearest.

It sounds awful, but when you look at exactly we are are doing on our phones while travelling, it begins to make sense.

According to data from the Hotels.com Mobile Travel Tracker survey, after unlocking our phones on their trips, it appears that we are using our phone to search for restaurants and food markets (57 per cent), followed by using maps and directions apps to get around (54 per cent).

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Nearly half of 18-29 (44 per cent) and 30-39 year olds (47 per cent) primarily use social media on their phones while on holiday – of course wanting to show off their snaps to friends and family back home.

In fact only 13 per cent of us seem to switch off and don’t use the Internet at all whilst travelling.

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The Hotels.com Mobile Travel Tracker also looked at what activities travellers would be prepared to do in the future on their mobile devices whilst travelling.

The most popular future usage was leaving an instant hotel review, booking a restaurant or taxi whilst travelling and a third of people said they would be happy using their mobile at a self check-in kiosk at a hotel.

Travellers also said they would like to have a more two-way conversation with hotels via mobile during their stay. Holiday-makers would happily instant message a hotel, order room service on mobile and 32 per cent would welcome push notifications with destination information from the hotel.