I love family vacations! Seeing the kids and the grandkids in a different locale soaking up the sunshine usually the beach and seeing what the location has to offer just warms my heart. Seven years ago, our family took a vacation to Panama City, Florida and the vacation went off without a hitch! The secret to a great vacation is in the planning!
Location of Vacation Spot
The first item to work on is to pick the vacation spot. Seven years ago, I picked the location after touring two places. This time, I selected three places for everyone in the family to vote on. Group texts are a great tool to use for a busy family. To my surprise, the majority of the votes were for the same place!
The next step is to go to the vacation spot before the actual trip to check out accommodations, excursions, and food for the area and the travel required to get to the vacation site whether it is by car or plane. When checking out the site, you can imagine everyone there laughing and having fun. In planning the current family trip, we were going to check out the site and we picked the wrong time as a hurricane hit very close to the vacation site. Morale of the story: If you are checking out a beach locale, do not plan to check it out in the fall!!
Scheduling
Deciding on the vacation spot is the easy part of the vacation planning. The hard part is scheduling the week of the vacation. First, there are the work schedules with five different jobs and the PTO associated with the jobs. Second, there are school schedules for six grandkids plus camps and activities throughout the summer to navigate around.
Third, the length of time for the vacation is dependent on the PTO time that the adults have. From grandparents that have the most PTO to having a limited number of PTO or no PTO at all because of being self-employed. After all the checking, a week is finally picked and getting everyone to set aside that week in their calendar!
Entertainment
Figuring out the entertainment for the family vacation is the fun part to plan. Starting with the ages of the kids will determine the activities that you plan. I search the website of visitor information for that town to get an idea of what the town has to offer. I use the viator.com app where you can search activities by location.
Below is an example of the searching of activities for our last family vacation:
Other Vacation Planning Apps
Whether you are planning to stay at a hotel on your trip or rent a house, there are two apps that I have used in my vacation planning numerous times. Hotels.com is a great app to use to secure hotels. If you become a member, you can get discounts based on the number of trips that you take in a year.
OneKey Cash is now affiliated with Hotels.com, Vrbo, and Expedia. You can earn cash by using one of these three apps and then apply the discounts to any one of them. For example, if you earn cash on Hotels.com, you can apply the discount on Vrbo.
If you need more space than a hotel or hotel suite, I use the app Vrbo. I have rented a couple of houses through Vrbo and they are great places to stay at your vacation destination. The process ran smoothly from reserving a house, gaining access to the house, and leaving the house. I did have one house that I reserved and had to cancel the reservation. The refund was the day after the cancellation.
If you are flying, each airlines has it’s own app, or you can apps such as Hopper, Trip.com, or Expedia.com. As you are out traveling, there is an app called Local Eats that will show the restaurants are nearby to where you are.
The final app that I use is TripIt. Since everytime you have a reservation, you are sent an email, TripIt collects your emails from booking information and you can see them in an itinerary for your trip. Another app similar to TripIt is Wanderlog. I just downloaded it and will use it on the next trip. It seems to have more information in one place than TripIt. I will try it out and report back on my findings.
Planning a family vacation takes some prep work before you get there, however, it is well worth the effort and the trip. Have a great time and do not forget to take pictures for those beautiful memories!!
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