When many of us were kids, “family travel” meant piling everyone into the van with a tent and heading to a campground for a few days, hitting a National Park or two during summer break, or maybe spending some time at the closest beach each year. The concept of “family travel” has evolved quite a bit in the last few decades to include different kinds of trips – and, therefore, different kinds of families.
One thing that’s stayed the same, however, is that taking a whole family on a trip is more expensive than when you backpacked solo around Europe or did that college road-trip with your buddies, if for no other reason than you’ve got more people to think about – which translates into more airline tickets, more hotel beds, and more meals to buy. That, in turn, means it’s even more important to hunt for travel deals when you’re booking family trips.
We’ve posted a series of articles on this site recently that we think will help you plan a family trip without breaking the bank. You can consider this the “table of contents” to those articles, as they’re all linked below so you can find them easily.
The words “adventure travel” might conjure up ideas for trips that you wouldn’t think would be very family-friendly, but there are definitely family adventure trips that are great for all ages. Of course, you know your family best, and will be the best judge of what activities your kids will be able to handle or how interested your family will be in any given activity. But the good news is that there’s a huge variety in the kinds of family adventure trips that are out there for you to choose from – and the definition of “adventure” is pretty broad, too.
Family vacation planning can be a challenge – with all the components you need to factor in, the different age groups you need to keep entertained, the disparate interests inherent in any family group, and the expense that seems to go up exponentially, it’s no wonder that package trips are so popular for traveling families. For those of you who prefer the idea of visiting more than one location during your vacation – but who don’t want to pack and unpack constantly or schlep an entire family’s worth of luggage from hotel to hotel – then a family cruise is a great option to consider.
While some people consider travel planning to be half the fun of travel, if you’re planning a trip for a family group it’s often that much nicer when you can get things done more quickly and with fewer steps. It’s not a research project you’re always looking for, after all – sometimes you really just want a vacation. Which is one of the many reasons all-inclusive package trips are so popular for family travel.
You’ll often see articles about how to find cheap airfare – including on this site – that say it’s important to cut the cost of your airline ticket because it’s almost always the most expensive part of your travel budget. Never is that more true than when you’re planning family travel – because you’re multiplying the cost of a trip by the number of people in your family. Rather than limit yourself to destinations you can get to by driving, however, let’s look at some ways to find cheap airfare for family groups.
Remember when Baltimore, Maryland was just about the only city in the United States trying to make its downtown area a desirable place to visit? I sure do. My parents dragged me there all the time and made sure to tell me all about the city’s urban planning revival over and over and over again.