Taking a holiday with your kids is a wonderful experience for everyone. It helps you bond, it gives you great memories, and it helps your kids learn about other cultures and see the world.
Trip planning for a family holiday is a whole other story. It can be a stressful endeavor if you aren’t prepared for it. With these three tips, you can ensure your next trip planning effort is stress-free and smooth.
1. Consider a family villa holiday
After picking a destination, you can start to look at what style of holiday you want. Your destination may influence how your trip is mapped out. For example, if you’re staying in a big city and plan on lots of touring and sightseeing, you might prefer a downtown hotel with plenty of amenities to keep the kids occupied during some downtime. If you’re travelling to a beach town, you might want to book an all-inclusive resort.
One option is to choose from a variety of family villa holidays. It takes a lot of the stress out of planning all your trip details while also offering child-friendly activities and facilities, so you don’t have to try and find things for the kids to do all on your own. Plus, if you’re travelling with a lot of family members, you can find accommodation for everyone, since these villas can fit up to 20 people.
A family villa holiday can also solve logistical problems with the added car hire and airport transfer options. Don’t spend time trying to organize everyone into cabs or worse, trying to figure out public transit in another city with kids in tow. Instead, have the freedom to plan day trips or check out bucket-list destinations while being able to schlep all your gear with you wherever you go.
2. Get a rough idea of your trip before Googling
Trying to plan a trip from absolute scratch with no idea of where to go or what to do can be an overwhelmingly stressful experience if you start with Google. There is an infinite amount of choices, a myriad of travel blogs and mommy blogs offering advice and recommendations, and a never-ending list of all the places you have to see listed on Google. You could spend hours and hours reading through everything, only to end up with nothing because you can’t decide.
Instead, have a family meeting to sit down and discuss what everyone wants out of the trip. Make sure to get everyone’s opinion so nobody feels left out. Once you have a general idea of what everyone wants, you can start to compile them into a trip that satisfies everyone’s needs and desires. It will help narrow down your selection and give you a starting point on what tours or activities to book. Let Google be the facilitator rather than the decider of what you do and where you go.
3. Be flexible
Travelling with kids means there’s a good chance something will happen to cause you to deviate from your schedule for the day. Maybe you forget some necessary supplies at your hotel and have to go back, making you late for your reservation or booking. Maybe there’s a tantrum along the way that causes you to stop and deal with the situation. Whatever it is, it’s best to expect it.
Remember to go with the flow while you’re on your trip. It’s your holiday too, so there’s no need to get stressed if something doesn’t happen exactly to plan. When you’re making your itinerary, it’s also good idea to leave lots of room in between bookings so you aren’t rushing from place to place trying not to be late. This can help avoid a plan going awry, but just in case it does anyway, do your best to stay calm and relaxed. There are always other activities to do no matter where you are visiting.
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