I often get asked about travelling with kids and one thing that seems to come up regularly is questions about where we stay.

I have a hard time giving a direct answer to that question because depending where you are in life, your hotel choice can really make or break your vacation: Just ask any parent who’s had to sit in a dark hotel room while trying to get their baby to sleep.

Here’s my experience and personal opinion on the Hotel vs AirBnB debate:

Hotel

The Good

It’s pretty. There’s nothing quite like that Julia-Roberts-in-Pretty-Woman feeling of walking into the lobby of a swanky hotel. That excitement never gets old, at least not for me. Restaurants, room service, and big beautiful breakfasts have a way of really making you know your on vacation. Not to mention the fact that your room is magically cleaned once, sometimes twice a day. And chances are that if you’re at a place that cleans your room twice a day, you’re also getting turn down service with a chocolate on your pillow before bed. You will return from your vacation forgetting what it’s like to make the bed.

The Not so Good

Travelling with babies can be challenging. Trust me. I had two kids in less than two years and I’ve brought those kids around the world and back again. Literally. I have a PhD in travelling with infants.

So I know from personal experience that there’s a few things to keep in mind when you’re thinking of booking a hotel with babies. Naps and early bedtimes. When our kids were babies, sleep was a precious thing that we never got enough of. That meant that when it was the girls’ nap time, if they weren’t sleeping in strollers and we went back to the hotel, someone had to stay in the dark room and be on nap-duty. Lucky for me, my husband was always happy to take the nap-time shift(so he could sleep too) while I either went to the hotel gym, pool, or bar for some alone time. If you don’t like to nap and you’re staying in a hotel, I hope you like to sit silently in dark rooms.

Another challenge is not having a kitchen, but I’ll get into that in a second.

AirBnB

The Good

The kitchen. If you have a baby on bottles, or a toddler on mush, you can’t put a price tag on having access to a kitchen for storing things in the fridge and being able to wash bottles and containers in the sink. If your holiday is long and you can manage to find a rental with a washing machine, it is basically like hitting the jackpot when you have young travellers with you because they tend to wear the food they eat and in turn, so do you.

The other huge bonus of holiday rentals is that you have more space. This means that if your kids go to bed early in one room, you still have a living space, or maybe even a balcony where you can have a little beverage and enjoy the evening without feeling like you’re trapped in the room. It’s all quite civilized after you’ve tried sitting in the dark of a single hotel room.

The Not so Good

You might become the maid. A bit of the ‘holiday’ feel is lost when you are washing dishes, clothes and making beds on your vacation. You get the joy of having the extra space but you may be lacking the luxury of getting pampered.

Another issue for us: receiving the the key. If you are a planner, this might not be an issue for you, but for me, I never know what time I’m going to arrive, so I never know when to tell the people to meet me at the holiday rental with the key, and depending on the country we’re in, we don’t always have a functioning phone to call someone. On vacation I don’t always feel like planning my day around meeting the AirBnB person. There’s something nice about turning up at hotel whenever you want and having the room key ready and waiting for you.

Our Solution

See what works for you.

Because our family travels in a pack of four, we always book a hotel suite because we need the space and usually we can make that work. I tend to be a late planner, so on our last vacation the suites were all booked. Instead, we got two rooms that joined together. Not a cheap time, but the girls though it was VERY cool that they had their own room.

Take it on a case by case basis.

Our kids are a little older now, so no one naps and they can stay up later on vacation, so we don’t really need to rent an apartment, other than a few exceptions:

When we travel for longer than two weeks, it’s great to get a holiday rental to do some laundry and have some healthy snacks in the fridge.

If there’s a special occasion-like Christmas, we always try and get into an apartment because it’s easier for Santa to work his magic and for the grown ups to partake in some holiday cheer after the kids go to bed.

When we’re on vacation with other people we’ve rented bigger spaces so it was easier to be all together and to have a common space, like a living room, to hang out.

There you have it. My take on how to travel as a family, without making yourself crazy.

*Insider tip(don’t judge)…if you want to stay at a fancy hotel, but you have a baby. There is a solution if you’re creative. Empty out the mini bar and use it to stash your bottles. AND, those swanky places sometimes have crazy big bathrooms…big enough to fit baby cots in and act as a bedroom. Don’t ask me how I know.

Happy Travels!