Travel Tips: Booking the Best for your Family Vacation
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Once the kids have arrived, top priorities for dream vacations take a shift from long couple massages and star lit safaris to kid menus and baby feeding chairs! Your needs take a new twist from happy and efficient staff to a family friendly property with provisions for the young ones. Here are a few key tips as listed by Lillian Gaitho to bear in mind when choosing your stay.
Choosing the Right Hotel
The best place to start off is your network of friends, tap into your mum and dad groups whether from church, kindergarten meetings, chamas and playgroups. Find out their favorite resorts, and listen to their experiences. You can also post your queries on social groups and online travel platforms. Of course, at the end of the day – you are the one to decide on what’s best for you and your brood.
What Kind of Room to Book
After you’ve settled on the preferred hotel, the next big item of priority is the type of room. This will highly depend on the age of your children; for instance you’ll definitely prefer to preserve both your sanity and privacy by sleeping in different rooms with the pre-teens and school going children. This however may raise your budget ten-fold, and where budget does not matter, you do not want the separation to disturb the wholesome ‘family experience’. Hotels like the Amboseli Serena Lodge have both family rooms as well as triple rooms in light of this. Request for double rooms with adjoining doors, or better still go for a cottage that will house the entire family. For infants, make an early request for baby cots.
Negotiating Children Rates and Policies
Bargain is a friend of business! That is why you need to ask all the right questions from the very first call you make to your trip advisor or booking agent. Apart from the provided children policy, you’ll discover discount brackets on the young ones – which may increase with all subsequent child after the very first obvious. Take great advantage in that you are the one bringing in business with every extra meal/bed. Travel does not need to be extravagant.
Cutting Costs through Sharing
Family vacations is the perfect time to bond as well as reconnect. With this in mind, sharing of available and affordable facilities should not be an issue. For instance, children who normally sleep in different bedrooms back home should be eased in on the idea of sharing a hotel room or even a bed without much ado. Similarly, if vacationing with relatives, you can consider booking a common room for cousins within the same age bracket.
Child Minders and Nannies
Making the most of the short breaks you will definitely need to catch between the toddler screams and sibling fights is a nightmare for many vacationing families. This is why hotels that provide nanny and minder services are most ideal for families. You can then enjoy a long candle lit meal or indulge in the spa without the anxieties of any lurking hazards. Its worth of note for resorts keen on attracting families on vacation to keep this in mind. If headed for the Kenyan Rift, you can give the Lake Naivasha Country Club or the Enashipai Resort and Spa a try and a few kilometres further down the road is Heritage Hotel’s Great Rift Valley Resort where dads can play golf, mom’s enjoy the Spa while the kids are looked after by a day nanny!
Happy Holidays!
