I fall firmly into the smartphone is good enough for me on vacation category, but I did make one purchase that is not mentioned in this article. A "tough" camera. Having a camera that is waterproof and sandproof is a must for any vacation with either of said features. My personal choice is the Olympus (TG-3 when I bought it, now TG-4), its been amazing, but there are a number of options to choose from.

Two things that a good compact camera has that no current smartphone has are the clincher for taking both for me - tilting viewfinder (great for low or high angle shots) and an optical zoom.

I shall take my Canon 700D with me, my 'smartphone' is just that, a phone.

Growing up, just about everyone in my family carried instamatic cameras and took "snapshots". Today's smartphone based cameras are a million times better than those instamatics ever were and they do the job they were intended to do, capture a moment, quickly with a minimal amount of fuss. And I say that as the owner of a digital SLR which is just too much of a pain in the behind to lug around and set up for a shot. ;-)

SnoopyManiac beat me to it! The number one reason to take a dedicated camera is so you can take it into the ocean, on a zipline, or over rapids. For views of my beach cabana I'll use my G4. When I go snorkeling on the coral reef I'll use my GoPro clone.

I may have the best answer: I take My Panasonic DMC FZ70 with a lens that goes from 20mm to 1200mm and take high quality photos. It is also comparatively light, does RAW and has a full range of manual controls. I'd post an exemplar, but there doesn't seem to be a means.

On a month long trip to the States last year, to visit mainly American Civil War sites, I found both my Lumix camera and my Galaxy Note essential. They were very much a complementary pair, with the wide angle and video recording of the Note useful in capturing certain sites, along with its "speed into action". However the quality of the Lumix shots were far superior in the main, and so for a lot of the time the versatility of the camera won the day. Carrying both is not a problem given their size and weight, so I do not miss the weight and bulk of my previous Nikon F4 set up!

Sales of Canon and Nikon compact cameras are down by more than 40% and responsible for the decline in both company's profits. Smartphones have replaced the pocket cameras.
The article shows the alternative to be a digital SLR camera and so is very misleading as the best alternative or step up from a smartphone or a compact camera is a mirrorless camera like the ones from Olympus and Fuji which have internal image stabilization and interchangeable lenses and can use an external flash device.
The Olympus and Fuji cameras and lenses are half the size and half the weight for traveling of the DSLR cameras and their lenses. Because the lenses are smaller they are also less expensive to manufacture. Something not mentioned is that these mirrorless cameras have lenses that let through 4 to 6 times as much light to the sensor and so work better with low light situations or when a higher shutter speed is needed to stop action with subjects that are moving.

Every time I take just a cell phone on a trip I regret it. Photos are dull and samey - boring. So I bought a little Olympus M4/3 a while back. Now the bag I carry is about the size of half a loaf of bread and in it I have the body, four lenses, filter kits, tripod, spare batteries and cards. I'm covered from 14mm to 200mm, including two fast primes. The entire kit cost around $400, weighs practically nothing and allows me to do anything from long daylight exposures to low-light street photography at night.
If I'm making a stereotypical shot of a waterfall and some other guy is there with his big SLR rig I can get setup, get a dozen photos and be on my way by the time he's putting his camera on his tripod. And at the end of the day the shots we get probably aren't any different (except for the wider angle on the bigger camera).