Sober travel goes mainstream in the US

NEW YORK • One year into the coronavirus pandemic, after months of gaining weight and feeling groggy, Ms Mayra Ramirez stopped drinking.

This summer, she will mark a new milestone for her sobriety - a completely alcohol-free holiday.

Ms Ramirez, 32, spent the first 12 months of the pandemic working remotely from a tiny Brooklyn apartment, drinking every weekend and many weekday evenings as well.

In March, like many others during this hard year, she realised her drinking was spiralling beyond the merely social kind. She has now been sober for three months.

So, when she began scouting locations for a break with a few non-sober friends, she suggested Sedona, Arizona, where they will wake up early and hike, and she will avoid potential pitfalls such as nightclubs and beachfront bars.

Many Americans turned to alcohol to blunt the stress, isolation and fear of the past 15 months.

An October study in Jama Network Open, the journal of the American Medical Association, found that Americans were drinking 14 per cent more than in the previous year.

Now, as vaccination levels rise and Americans head back to the roads and skies, sober travel, a subset of vacations once relegated only to 12-steppers and recovering addicts, is going mainstream.

In a June poll of more than 23,000 people by Branded Research, 29 per cent of respondents said they planned to take an alcohol-free trip after the pandemic.

Forty-seven per cent of the respondents to American Express' Global Travel Trends Report in March said wellness and mental health were among their top motivators for travel this year.

Even airlines are going dry. After banning booze in the cabin last year, several airlines are postponing a return to serving alcohol, thanks to unruly passengers.

Ruby Warrington, who published the book Sober Curious in 2018, has been fielding regular questions about sober travel in her eponymous Facebook group, where membership has swelled in the last year. She followed that book up last December with The Sober Curious Reset, a 100-day guide to rethinking one's relationship with alcohol.

Both of her books have tapped the global movement of "sometimes sobriety" that has been marked by trends such as Dry January and #mindfuldrinking.

"The pandemic really shone a light on our drinking habits," Warrington said. She quit drinking in 2016 and found travel to be the last and most daunting hurdle.

"Vacation drinking is definitely the drinking that I held on to the longest. It was the one hall pass I gave myself," she said. "A lot of people have looked at their drinking habits during the pandemic and don't want to go back to what they were. And they don't want a vacation to get in the way of their progress."

Sober travel is a close cousin of wellness tourism, a sector valued at nearly US$736 billion (S$988.9 billion) and expected to grow by US$315 billion by 2024, as the pandemic has amplified people's desire to optimise their health.

"Wellness travel, and sober travel being part of it, will become more compelling for individuals who want to keep their immune systems strong," said Ms Wendy Bazilian, an exercise physiologist in San Diego.

"Post-pandemic, we will be craving a lot of different resets."

In cities, too, options for alcohol-free fun are expanding.

Spire 73, the open-air bar atop the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown, has responded to a demand for virgin drinks by adding non-alcoholic wines to its bottle-service menu.

At the Regent Singapore, mocktails at the acclaimed Manhattan Bar are being concocted with freshly squeezed juice and steeped tea infusions.

Alcohol-free morning raves, such as Daybreaker and Morning Gloryville, had to go virtual during the pandemic, thus widening their global audience.

Newly sober or sober-curious travellers should plan ahead, said Ms Holly Sprague, co-founder of Dry Together, an alcohol-free online community for midlife mothers, by scouting out sites for mocktails and rethinking habits like drinking at airports.

Ms Sprague, 46, has been dry for nearly three years.

Ms Megan Barnes Zesati, her co-founder, is also 46 and on her fourth dry year.

"During my vacations these days, I'm as likely to enjoy a sunrise as a sunset," Ms Zesati said.

"On past vacations, I rarely took advantage of mornings. Now, they are my favourite times."

NY TIMES