Where To Start When Booking A Family Holiday

There is no hiding the fact that our little family loves to travel. We try to catch an adventure most weekends and fill our holiday periods with road trips, staycations (that’s a new buzz word 😉 ) and flying trips when we can. I’ve noticed that we are being approached more and more by other parents wanting to know what to do on the school holidays or for advice about a good family destination for a particular month. Most recently, a reader suggested I give some pointers about where to start when booking a family holiday. This post is dedicated to you Sarah!

1. When Can You Travel?

Before you start thinking about your destination wish list, it is really important to know when you can travel. Some destinations are best avoided during particular months of the year if you have kids at your heel. For example, we find December/January is not a great time for travel to Darwin with the increased risk of cyclones, humidity and that you may find some places washed out.  I’m also a little hesitant to go on a road trip into central NSW during the winter months unless we are prepared for snow.

For teachers like me, we are often restricted to the school holidays unless we have long service leave up our sleeves. Have school aged children? How do you feel about taking them out of school for a few weeks? You need to think about this too. Other workers may need to apply for leave at the commencement of the year.

Once you know when you can travel you can move to the next step.

2. Destination

T and I have a little process we take when planning our trips. We have a Bucket List of destinations that we would love to travel that we refer to when making our travel plans. We also have a list of places we refuse to consider even when a top deal tries to entice us. We don’t stick firm to the destination until much later in the process. This is really important as such flexibility provides us the opportunity to snatch up great deals and not put ourselves into a large amount of debt because we are hellbent on that one destination regardless of how much it costs. I urge you to create a similar list for yourself.

3. Budget

Our third step is budget. It is really important to know how much you have to play with and to be realistic about what you can spend. I want to enjoy my holidays and not feel that I need to share my dinner with T to save a penny or two when we are out. Only have $500.00 and don’t like camping? Perfect, let’s look at a road trip inland or maybe a couple of nights in the city. A huge $6K tax return? Righteo, maybe we can look at Hawaii. Be realistic and don’t count your credit cards as your budget!

I like to be a little proactive with my budget and we commit to putting a small amount away each pay into our travel savings account. We also have a money-box where we put all our coins at the end of the day (sometimes notes) which we use for special treats when we are away. How do you save?

4. Health

So you have you know exactly when you can travel. You have a fair idea of the destinations you would consider and your budget is set, what now? Our next step is to consider our health needs. For us, living with a chronic condition (you can read more about that here), this means we need to investigate travel insurance. Make sure you read the public disclosure statement so you don’t have any surprises. Just before our trip to the USA earlier this year we discovered that we were excluded from most Travel Insurance policies here in Australia. It took us some time to find a company that would cover the family and it did cost us almost as much as the plane ticket. Remember to factor that into your budget 😉

5. Research, research, research

So you have steps 1-4 covered, right? Well now is the time to start your research. Head off to your local travel agent and grab a few brochures from each place you would consider during your holiday travel period. Grab a copy of Out and About with Kids. Purchase a DK Travel Book if you are contemplating an overseas destination (I love the DK series as it is usually very visual and provides me with a snapshot of the places we are hoping to visit). Work out a general cost for accommodation for 5 nights to start with for each place. This will allow you to compare the price of each destination. Use Webjet to work out average out the approximate airfare. Once you’ve done this, you can cut down your destination list.

6. The waiting game – Booking Your Flights

When flights are part of my travel plans I start stalking the airlines for the best price. From step 5, I usually have a fair idea of what the lowest airfares typically reach for a particular destination. I then wait for them to hit that price and pounce. Jetstar have developed a great service where you can enter your travel dates, number flying and your budget and it will send you an email when the flights hit that price. Using this strategy we have flown to Darwin and back for under $800.00. Fiji on a shoe string and even Hawaii at a steal. Be ready to pounce – they usually don’t stay cheap for long.

7. Accommodation

I don’t start booking accommodation until we have our airfares locked in. I use a number of different platforms for sourcing the perfect place for us to stay including, but not limited to,  airbnb, expedia and Stayz. In previous years we have used Stayz for sourcing all of our accommodation on the Gold Coast and in Darwin, although I think airbnb may be an option next time. We found that we could source private accommodation with all the luxuries other than room service at a much better place this way. In the USA we played each day by ear so I needed to source accommodation a day or two in advance. We utilised Expedia almost exclusively and were surprised by some of the deals we found (US$200 a night for a king suite at the Roosevelt!! Oh my!). I almost always cross reference the price offered by a third party with the actual hotel as well. Sometimes it is better to book direct.

8. Transport

Depending on the destination, we like to be independent and usually hire a car. We have found that this is usually best secured as early as possible to get the best deal. Search for discount codes or find  out whether the location has local providers. For example, in Perth and Sydney we’ve found that Bayswater Car Rental offers rentals with the insurance excess built into the pricing which is so much cheaper than the big companies. Score!

When we were in San Francisco I utilised Uber and thanks to a great referral credit, travelled from the airport to our accommodation in Union Square for US$3.00!!! (Use my invite code, leahs697, and get a free ride up to $20. Redeem it  here). It’s safe, super easy to use and no doubt  your driver will give you some insider tips to the city too.

9. Currency

If you are travelling overseas you will need to think about currency. In previous years we have travelled with just our credit card and a few thousand’s worth of dollars in a snatch proof purse. On our last trip we changed this up a little and invested in a Commonwealth Bank Travel Card (they are available in from other banks too). We preloaded the card with the currency of our choice directly from our savings before we left and we were able to load it whenever we needed to. The beauty of this card is that it is loaded in real time, you can lock in your exchange rate as you convert and it has $0 transaction, loading, and transfer fees. zero, zilch, nadda. So much cheaper than our Visa Credit card. From our experience we recommend that you take a Travel Card, Cash and your Visa Credit Card as backup.

10. Pack

Once you have covered steps 1 – 9 you’re ready to start packing! hmmm…..I think that deserves a post all to itself!

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Where do YOU start when booking a family holiday? Do you have any hot tips we should consider?