On the island of El Hierro, far from the crowds of Tenerife’s tourist strip, lies a secluded refuge with a rather unique booking system. El Elevador, an austere and solitary accommodation perched on the edge of a volcanic cliff on the southernmost of the eight inhabited Canary Islands, accepts reservations only through handwritten letters. This simple, single-open space sleeps just two guests and is a technological black hole—no phone service, no internet, and no nearby town to keep you entertained.
The Only Way to Book: A Handwritten Letter
You won’t find El Elevador on Airbnb or Booking.com. The only way to visit is by sending the owners a handwritten letter. The website greets potential guests with a poetic invitation: ‘Every journey begins with a desire. With an intention. With a letter.’ This analogue approach is a stark contrast to the instant, algorithm-driven bookings typical of modern travel.
Prospective visitors should be warned that this is no typical luxury stay. There is no room service or state-of-the-art interior. Instead, El Elevador encourages travellers to go back to basics, enjoy the dramatic landscape, and totally slow down. Given its mystique, prices are omitted from the website, but it’s unlikely to be budget-friendly.
Why the Handwritten Letter? A Psychologist’s Perspective
Dr. Elaine Kasket, a cyberpsychologist specializing in human-technology interaction, explains the appeal. ‘The usual process is quick and convenient,’ she says. ‘El Elevador is slow, requiring thoughtfulness, patience, and the constructive disruption of the automatic, non-reflective, fast-paced behaviours we’ve fallen into with digital technologies. To stay there, you have to stop, think, and reflect upon why you want to visit. Then you have to do something increasingly unfamiliar: sit down with pen and paper, formulate your plea, handwrite it, address an envelope, find a stamp. And THEN you must wait to see whether your bid is successful. Unlike the online booking process, it’s odd, special, unfamiliar, and personal. It pulls a greater connection with our humanity from us, and it connects us with the human on the other side.’
If your request is accepted, a letter containing a single digital link is sent to you, solely to finalize dates and other details. That’s your last brush with technology before the extreme digital detox begins.
The Rise of Eudaimonic Travel
El Elevador’s business model feeds directly into growing travel trends. Wellness tourism has become exceedingly popular over the past five years and is expected to be valued at $1.4 trillion by 2027. Additionally, travellers still value traditional ways of experiencing the world. A spokesperson from Ordnance Survey notes that the company ‘still sells close to a million copies of paper maps and books a year.’
Dr. Andrew Stevenson, senior psychology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University and author of ‘The Psychology of Travel’, calls this a boom in ‘eudaimonic travel’. ‘The term basically means to “travel for self-improvement”,’ he explains. ‘Instead of looking for fun and sun, eudaimonic travel is a journey of self-discovery, finding out more about yourself and investing in restorative travel.’
Psychogeography: Pushing Back Against Algorithms
Andrew also highlights ‘psychogeography’—the idea that our relationship with places is shaped by personal experience rather than a ‘predetermined itinerary’. Many travellers rely on algorithms to shape their journeys, from restaurant choices to ‘hidden gems’ that already have 100,000 likes on TikTok. But psychogeography pushes back against this. ‘Places aren’t products that should be sold to everybody as a kind of mass tourism,’ Andrew says.
El Elevador offers a unique experience built around this idea, which Andrew calls ‘a direct backlash to TripAdvisor’. Elaine adds, ‘Much of the magic of travel involves the unexpected; the unpredictable; the uncontrollable; the magic serendipity. Everyone has the right to decide what they expect from a break, but the technologically, algorithmically driven world of travel and hospitality often caters to consumers, not travellers.’
How to Travel Differently
Andrew suggests rethinking how you experience a new location. ‘When you arrive somewhere, try to experience it through the senses. Don’t reach a decision straight away—internally giving it three or five stars. And when people ask you about a place, don’t say “oh, it was great” or “it was rubbish” or even make comments such as “I’ve done Bali”. Instead describe things about the place, the things you saw—leave it up to others to decide whether it’s attractive to them or not,’ he explains.
El Elevador is a special experience, but also a challenge. The question is: could you last a week there?
