Family trips can be a great way to get to know your family better, to get back in touch with them become of your busy schedule or simply to enjoy life with the people you like. But traveling with children can be challenging sometimes. Here are 5 tips to make sure you have the best time with your family on your next family holiday!
5. Don’t make it too long
If it is the first time traveling your children, we recommend you to start with a trip no longer than one week. The reason being that on this first trip, the goal is to make them enjoy traveling and a longer trip can make them miss home. This experience will also give you an insight on what they love and what they don’t. This information is very useful for planning your upcoming trips and you can therefore start extending them longer and longer. Personally, we believe that the job as a parent while traveling is to help their kids open their mind to discover new culture and become travel savvy as you are. Who knows, maybe they will be the one who will plan your family trips in the future!
4. Pick the right accommodation
If you want to avoid your kids to fight on who as the best bed or the best room, try to find accomodation that does leave space for that. Of course you can always go in traditional hotel rooms, but when you are traveling with a family of more than 5, you usually have to pay a second room, which can get expensive.
Another alternative that we really like is the concept of home sharing like Airbnb or Vrbo, which let you stay in someone’s house. The advantage of this kind of lodging is that you usually have more space for everyone, more privacy for you and your partner and you can save money on food because you don’t have to go to the restaurant everyday. It is alway good to have some space when you are traveling with your family and staying in a bigger accommodation is usually favorable when you are traveling with children.
3. Don’t expect to do as much as you would normally do
Sure you could fit so many thing in one day when you were traveling when your partner, but now that you have kids, you have to expect to do less. Indeed if you think that way you will put unnecessary stress on your family. To prevent that, make sure you leave more space in your schedule and leave yourself 1 or 2 extra options if you manage to do more than you were expecting. Remember that the important here is to enjoy the time you have with your family!
2. Plan as much as you can
Let’s face it, you are not as young as you use to be and traveling with an entire family is an entire different ball game than traveling by yourself or with your partner. It is way easier for children to get bored than adult, so you should avoid that at all cost if you don’t want to get into a fight. Of course you don’t have to plan everything out, but mapping out your days in advance is a great way not only to save money because of early bird discount, it is also a great way to make sure everybody is happy, and we know that when the kids are happy, the parents are happy!
1. Make sure your family sleeps well along the way
Whether you are traveling by car or plane, the first thing you want is to be able to enjoy your trip as soon as you arrive at destination. Who’s ever arrived to is dream destination, but wasn’t able to enjoy it right away, whether it was because of jetlag or exhaustion. If you travel by plane, to prevent that discomfort, we recommend you to read our article, 5 tips to sleep well on a plane. Another challenge when you travel with your family, specially by car, is to keep your children calm. A great way to do that is to make them sleep as long as possible. You can either use sleeping pills, which is not ideal for young children, or use more natural alternatives like the use of a travel pillow. With that in mind you are good to start your journey on the right track!
The article “5 tips to make your next family trip the most enjoyable” was written by Simon Dallaire, co-founder of Ibboo4u, Inc.