Seven Tips for Planning a Kid-Friendly Summer Family Vacation

By Manny Ruiz, Best Western Travel Expert

I don’t know about you, but when the time comes for fast-forwarding my watch for Daylight Savings time, it serves as the annual reminder that my wife and I have to start planning our family’s next summer vacation.

There are many advantages to plotting your summer travel early, including getting better deals on airfare and hotels and even scoring tickets to attractions that are usually reserved months in advance (the Alcatraz museum comes to mind, here).

In my family’s case,  we have four kids who are each four years apart. For us, planning is not only about saving money, but also plotting out our actual travel-survival plan. Here are a few helpful tips you can use when preparing for your family’s summer travel:

*         Consult with the kids. My wife and I have a strong track record of selecting vacation spots that our kids end up loving but, as they’ve gotten older, we’ve noticed the oldest kids (Jonathan, 14, and Elena, 10) want to be more involved in the process.

*         But don’t give them too many choices. Giving our children the option to weigh in  on the places we’d like to travel comes hand-in-hand with also giving them no more than three choices. For example, our kids know that we’ll likely visit Colorado, Utah or Maine this summer, so we’ve told them to narrow down the researching to those three destinations. They can share their choice and why they would or wouldn’t want to go to one of those states.

*         Research the truly off the beaten path vacation jewels. After traveling as much as we have, we’ve realized some of the best places you’ll see aren’t necessarily the most obvious or convenient ones. Most vacation getaways are marketed as accessible and easy, conveniently located in places that are meant to be found by the masses. There’s nothing wrong with that but, if you do a little web browsing, you’ll inevitably find that near most obvious vacation spots there are also inconvenient gems worth exploring.

*         Don’t plan a hectic, jam-packed vacation. Regardless of your vacation style, you’ll enjoy a vacation a lot more if you slow down the pace. Remember, that’s why it’s called “vacation.” A few years ago, we did a 12,000-mile, 46-day road trip across the United States. We did some truly unbelievable things while taking in 33 states, but we were also very exhausted in the end. Some days, driving physically hurt we constantly felt rushed. The lesson was clear: in the future, don’t plan vacations that are more intense than you can handle.

*         Select hotels that are clean and ranked highly. In the world of hospitality, you’ll find hotels that are big, but still unsuitable and uncomfortable for your family. That happened to us at a wonderful-looking, resort-style hotel in Orlando once. It advertised every single amenity you could imagine. However, upon arriving and unpacking our bags, we discovered it was infested with baby roaches. Needless to say, we made an emergency reservation at another hotel that same night.

*         Bake in time to ‘get lost’ and improvise. In our early travel days, my wife and I would militantly schedule our vacation. Planning is terrific and making certain reservations are necessary, but I highly recommended that making plans that are malleable and allow for improvisation. The more people participating in your road trip, the higher your odds are for not  being able to stick to a strict, iron-clad schedule. Being flexible is of the utmost importance for your sanity while on vacation.

*         Pack lighter and travel easier. One of the most common mistakes we made during our first several family vacations was trying to pack too much. Don’t make this mistake. Traveling light will make your trip infinitely more enjoyable and less stressful as you’ll have fewer things to worry about.

Don’t forget that family summer vacations can, and should be, engaging and multi-faceted without making you feel like you’re working. Research the trip, get your children involved in the process and be willing to let schedules go sometimes. These are the keys to creating summer family memories you’ll treasure for a lifetime.