Ingenious Family Travel Tips For The Holidays

Family travel is fun and is sure to produce some memorable experiences. With the holidays approaching, travel is on the rise because kids are out of school. Here are some ingenious family travel tips for the holidays to help you prepare for a smooth trip.

Ingenious Family Travel Tips

Travel Preparation Tips

Travel preparation is the key to travel with family and have a fabulous trip!

Road Tip Planning

If there is a road trip involved in your travel plans, check out a map or use a cool app like Road Trippers to help you plan your stops at attractions along the way to break the trip up and keep it fun. You may also want to brush up on some fun road trip games and get a road trip with kids checklist.

Flight Planning

When booking flights use sites like kayak.com or expedia.com to search multiple airlines at once and get the best deal easily. Don’t forget to check southwest.com too since they don’t come up in aggregation sites those I just mentioned.

Select your airplane seats for convenience.
-It depends how many are in your family and on the plane configuration but try to select your seats so that the family is all close together and when possible there is an empty seat between family members. If no one takes the empty seat, you get more room! If someone does take the middle seat, just ask to switch so you can sit next to your travel partner.
-The seats along the wings of a plane usually experience the least amount of turbulence so they may be a little better for children with motion sickness.
-On long fights, window sleets are great for sleeping against.

Hotel Planning Family Travel Tips

When traveling with family, it is nice to have spacious suites with separate living and sleeping areas, free hot breakfast, free wifi, laundry facilities, and a fully equipped kitchen (which can save you tons of money on eating out). Being that I am a Residence Inn Ambassador, I would naturally suggest checking for a Residence Inn at ResidenceInn.com because they have so many family friendly features.

Family Travel Packing Tips

Family Travel Tips For Finances and Important Documents

Take an extra bank card and/or credit card with you as a backup. Be sure to call ahead and inform the credit card companies of your travel plans so they don’t suspend your account on a fraud alert.

If you are leaving the US, you may want to make photocopies of your passports. Email the photocopies to yourself so you can easily access them in worst case scenario. Have one adult carry the passports and the other adult carry the copies.

If you are leaving the country, you may want to withdraw money at ATMs instead of searching for currency exchanges. You can skip the long lines and the higher transaction fees that way.

Travel Tips For Tech

-Don’t forget to pack your camera AND it’s battery charger.
-Don’t forget to pack your cell phone AND it’s charger. If you lose your charger, sometimes the hotel will have lost and found with bunches to chose from.
-If you bring a tablet or computer, pack the charger!
-Make sure all your tech gadgets are fully charged before you leave home.

Travel Tips For Kids Packing

I like to give my kids responsibility so I tell them what I want to gather and put in their bags and I give them 15 minutes to complete the task. Then I check and make sure they actually remembered to pack socks like I told them to and that their clothes are weather appropriate. Limit their toys so they can manage their own bag on the trip.

Travel Tips For Packing Food and Drink

-You can’t bring bottles of water, juice, or any liquid for that matter, through security if they are sealed. But you can bring an empty water bottle for each of you and fill it up at a water fountain after passing though security. At about $4 for bottled airport water times five family members- you just saved $20!
-Don’t forget snacks. Kids and adults get grumpy when they are hungry!

Lifesaver Packing Tips

Don’t forget a few handy extras when traveling with family like wipes for messes, band aids for boo-boos, and asprin for headaches!

Now go have tons of fun on your family travel adventure! I hope you found these ingenious family travel tips helpful and that whether you are planning a trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes Lake Michigan or Birmingham, Alabama. Enjoy the trip!