The world is your playground and there are SO many wonderful places to learn and explore! Are you just getting started on planning your next unique family vacation and adventure? Mommy And Me Travels has searched high and low to bring you the best advice available from fellow mommy travel experts. These inspirational bloggers from around the world will guide you as your next family trip planners with their 10 expert travel tips and tricks.
1. Get The Kids Involved – First Tip For Planning A Trip With My Family
Get the kids involved! Vacation planning is more fun for all when everyone provides input for planning a trip with my family. Have everyone think of their top 2 or 3 vacation wishes. Do you want to go to the beach or skiing, and so on?
Regina from Full Time Field Trip shares these three ideas to help with getting your kids involved in the family trip planning:
*Ask them “what type of shoes do you want to wear on vacation?” Flip flops, snow boots, athletic shoes, dress shoes, etc.
*Give them three destinations that fit your needs and let them vote.
*Choose your favorite two cities then ask the kids to help you make a list of things to do in those areas. Pick the location that ticks the most boxes for your family.
Related – 8 Family Must Have Travel Items
2. Decide On Must Haves – Second Tip For Planning Your Unique Family Vacations
After you have gained ideas from the kids, it is time to start thinking about your ‘must haves’ for planning a unique family vacation just for your next adventure.
Sarah at Dandelion Seeds suggest that ‘must haves’ are the filter through which to view each possible place on your short list of destinations. She states:
“I suggest deciding what your ‘must haves’ are. It’s amazing how easy it is to choose a location once you clarify what you need, making sure to consider everyone who’s joining you. We choose vacation destinations that are near the activities we want to enjoy, but without making us feel like we’re sleeping in the middle of an amusement park. When I plan a trip with ‘must haves’ in mind, it helps narrow the options and simplify the planning process considerably.”
3. Narrow Down Locations – Third Tip For The Family Trip Planner
You now have a list of wishes and ‘must haves’ complete and it’s time to start thinking of locations that can accommodate your family wishes. Are you planning on flying, driving, or taking the train? This helps to narrow down which part of the world you will visit. If you are planning to travel internationally, don’t miss this 20 tips and tricks.
Annette from Tips From a Typical Mom offers these couple of questions for you to ask yourself as you are narrowing down locations as the family trip planner:
*Distance – Do we need to pay for airfare or can we drive?
*Things to do – Are there enough places to see and things to do to keep our kids engaged?
*Cost – Can we afford to get there, sleep there, eat there and pay for activities?
4. Check Out Accommodations – Fourth Tip For Family Travel Planning
As you start to narrow down your locations, don’t forget to research family accommodations for during your stay. Do the hotels give off a relaxed family friendly vibe or do they just tolerate families? Research more about your hotels on Hotel.com and Trip Advisor.
Nikki from Yorkshire Wonders believes that ensuring where you plan to stay is just as important as how you get there. She states:
“Where we stay is very important to us, not just the location, but the hotel or resort too. I look at what the rooms are like, whether the hotel has a child friendly pool, kids club or possibly evening entertainment for the children.”
5. Find Your Flights – Fifth Tip For Your Family Holiday Planner
So you are ready to enter the phase of securing your transportation, accommodations, and entertainment. Finding the flight for your unique family vacation can be the most difficult part of this whole process.
Fear Not! Kristy from World For A Girl shares her secret to finding a flight for your perfect family holiday planner:
“We spend hours on Skyscanner.com and travel websites researching accommodation and flight options. Eventually, we type ‘Everywhere’ into the Skyscanner search bar and our dates. This amazingly useful Skyscanner function means that you can see all the flights leaving your chosen airport on the date you’re interested in. We then filter the results by flight times and cost. And voila, Skyscanner has become our perfect family holiday planner.”
6. Watch For Deal – Sixth Tip For Planning Your Unique Family Vacations
If you have reached this step in your family trip planner adventure than you now probably have a pretty good idea of where you and your family want to vacation. Now is the time to start watching to secure the best deal available out there.
Shannon from Grab My Passport share’s how her ideas of what to watch to secure the best deals out there:
“We are subscribed to all the airlines’ email lists, and we follow a bunch of travel deal pages on Facebook so that we are alerted to all of the deals, promos, “error fares”, and discounts that are available as soon as they come out. This ensures that anytime a sale or special promotion pops up that matches something on our list, we jump on it.”
Also, make sure you check out Expedia, Trip Advisor, and Travelocity for awesome family package deals.
7. Secure Your Vacation With Points – Seventh Tip For A Trip With My Family
Congrats! You have worked your way through the planning phase and now you are ready to secure your accommodations and transportation. After you get this stage completed then the real excitement for your trip with family really begins.
I’m going to let you in on a secret that we use here at Mommy And Me Travels for when I am planning a trip with my family. I use credit card points, companion passes, and hotel status to maximize our experience and save money while doing it. If you are missing one of these cards, sign up below to get the best referral bonuses out there.
Related — Family Travel Hacking 101 – 5 Tips To Start Your Family Travel Hacks Journey
Southwest Airlines – My favorite airline credit card is Southwest Airlines because of their amazing companion pass. I love this companion pass because it can be used for every flight we take as a family for an entire year. My husband and I both earn one each year so that we only have to secure two tickets (with our points) and then each of our boys fly free (well we have to pay tax).
Hyatt World Premier – My go to hotel credit card is Hyatt World Premier. I love the perks that you are able to get at Hyatt when you reach the many different levels with this hotel chain. My favorite is reaching a Globalist status each year. When you manage to do that then you can pay for a basic room (cheapest) and get upgraded to suites upon your arrival. Who wouldn’t want to save that kind of money and live in luxury while on vacation.
Chase Sapphire Preferred – Rounding out our travel credit card recommendations is the Chase Sapphire Preferred. This card has an average annual fee but also has the most perks available for those that travel. (Military should call and ask them about your amazing discount on the fee.) You will get access to the zero fee delivery from doordash. When you redeem miles in the Chase portal you will get a bonus of 25%. This means 1 point cashes in at 1.25. These are just a very few of the benefits of this credit card so definitely check them all out when deciding to add this card to your portfolio.
Get the best referral deals out there! Apply with our links below!
These three credit cards will get you started on being able to travel like a pro and get the best bang for your money when you are securing your vacation accommodations and transportation. If you don’t use credit cards, that’s ok too, just make sure you do the research to find the best deal. Check out package family deals that can help save you money with sites like Expedia and Travelocity for bundled cost savings.
8. Start Building Your Itineraries – Eighth Tip For Your Unique Family Vacation
You now have your transportation and accommodations secured and it is time to start getting your activities planned and organized. When you are starting to plan out things to do on the ground don’t forget to look for places to keep the kids entertained also.
Kris from Gadsventure does just that when setting up her itinerary. She states:
“There has to be some kind of attraction to keep the children occupied and entertained, this could be a beautiful beach, a fun city or an interesting outdoors. Our kids will be much more excited about a trip and its lead up if we can talk about these things beforehand. As homeschool parents we like to add an element of education here too, so bonus points for a place with historical or cultural significance!”
Shannon from Captivating Compass mostly plans her unique family vacation itineraries around things for the kids to learn.
Deb from World Wise Kid focuses on the educational value and age-appropriateness choices by using nature, books, and language when deciding where their next adventure will take them.
9. Finalize Your Itineraries – Ninth Tip For Your Family Vacation Planner
At this stage you should be pretty close to finalizing all of your arrangements and have an idea of what you plan to see and do during your trip. If you haven’t already secured any portion of your trip, now is the time to do it. Last minute travel arrangements can be stressful and usually cause more anxiety than necessary. As a bonus, check out our tips for sightseeing with kids.
Now that you have your family travel itinerary planned, take the kids and head to your public library. This allows you and your kids to enjoy an afternoon together looking through books of everything you are going to enjoy during your next unique family vacation. Kids love being able to see, feel, and touch the pictures. This helps them start to get excited about learning and discovering your upcoming family adventure.
10. Build Family Memories – Your Tenth And Final Tip Of The Family Travel Planner
This tenth and final step is where all of your hard work as the family travel planner really pays off. You have built an amazingly unique family vacation that is tailored directly to your family. Building family memories on your trip is the only thing left for you to do. Remember not to stress if things go a little of schedule, that is part of the fun.
Here at Mommy And Me Travels we love to hear about all of the vacations that you are taking to build those family memories. Leave us a comment or join our Family Travel Facebook Group to share your experiences and ask questions to help you along this planning path.
Like this post? Save it for later and Pin it to Pinterest!
Shop With Us On Amazon!
Really useful list! I’ve found going through photo albums together of places we have been before the children were born really engages them and gives them the wanderlust! Trying to home grow my own little adventurers.
That is a great idea. I’m going to give that a shot when we start planning our next trip. Thanks for recommending.
I definitely agree with getting the kids involved in planning…and really useful point to figure out your top requirements as a family.
Great tips for planning a perfect family vacation. It’s really important to plan step by step..although sometimes I get lazy too
Don’t we all 🙂
I love all of your tips – these are great for those “must plan everything” families – like ours!
Thanks. We are very much a family that likes to have a plan before we leave. Of course then we have a ton of changes once we get there but it is much easier to deal with since we already know so much about a location.
Involving the kids I agree is so important. It allows for a much more enjoyable trip!
so many great tips here! i love researching unique experiences when we travel to new places!
These are fantastic tips! It is definitely important to get the kids involved in the planning of a family trip!
What fab tips that you have kindly provided.
I love planning my holidays.
Exciting times ahead for sure xx
100% yes to Kirsty at World For A Girl’s advice! We love using Skyscanner and often go through the same process she does to book our vacations. The ‘everywhere’ feature is great!
I really love how many said the kids should be involved. I completely agree! These are awesome tips!
Great tips, all of them! I love how several of your contributors mentioned getting the kids involved in the planning, and turning trips into educational experiences – we do both of these things, too!
I love the planning almost as much as I love the vacation! Our family gets together in family meetings to get all our plans organized and it’s always lots of fun! Thanks for the tips!
These are great tips! I love the idea of focusing on places with educational value. I learned so much more traveling growing up than I did in a classroom.
This is such a wealth of information. These are some great tips from traveling with littles to seniors alike. We always take into consideration we only go as fast and as far as our youngest member 🙂 Then we don’t have unrealistic expectations. Great post!
These are awesome tips! I am going to have to check out some of the websites listed, like the SkyScanner one. When we travel, it’s with my two young boys. We decide where we can get the cheapest flights, then plan around that most of the time since that’s usually our biggest expense.
What great advice, I learned about websites I never heard of, thanks!
Such great tips here. So proud to be in this collaboration of family travel bloggers. I can’t wait to read your future posts.
Because a child educated only in the classroom is an uneducated child, family travel is soooooo important. These are great tips to make it happen! ~ Sage Scott, the Everyday Wanderer
Great reminder to involve the kids more in planning our trips. I tend to organize it and then tell the kids. I need to get better at this. Thanks for all the great tips!