Why don't people take their kids on holiday?

My kids see a lof of the UK. We camp and we youth hostel.

We can't afford to travel overseas. My 14yo doesn't have a passport.

Simple.
DH and I travelled pre kids but he changed jobs to a family friendly role (with naff all salary) and I work for the NHS.

I could afford to take DD away, but I don’t. I love travel and I love languages but I’m studying as well as working full time. I’m also saving hard so that she can go to university if she wants to.

We can’t afford it. I expect many of the people you think can afford it can’t either.

Or they can’t see the value in spending £5k for a week in Spain.

Again, I've not said it's always 'either/or' but my experience of families who have travelled isn't really at the end of the spectrum where travel is about cultural experience. It's more about a cheap break in the warm with a pool for the kids. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just not that mind expanding, to be honest.

So I don't see the automatic 'it broadens your mind' argument some posters have put forward. Whether abroad or at home, how much your mind is broadened isn't so intrinsically linked to the place you went, it's what you did when you got there. Just as there are plenty of kids who go abroad and do cultural things there and when in the UK, there's plenty who frankly don't. Yet some seems to imply that the very act of taking them abroad automatically confers a broadening of horizons. It really doesn't.

By 18, I'd been abroad twice. Most of the kids I work with in Primary school have been more times than that by the age of 11. But if you ask them about it, not one of them talks about the scenery/museums/culture. They all talk about the pool and the beach. Great, lots of fun, but not intrinsically more enriching than the kids who went down the sea front at home and played the penny shuffles in the arcade, really, is it?

I disagree with the ALWAYS. Once a year my DH and I stay in an all inclusive hotel for a week or 10 days. We eat for a few meals and go on excursions every other or half day trips out every day depending on the location. We have often paid a lot less than if we’d booked flights, seats, suitcases, transfers, accommodation, all meals and drinks separately.

Ah right. I didn’t realise we were in “why don’t disadvantaged people just stop being disadvantaged” territory.

Again, it really isn’t an either or situation. The most well travelled people I met at university did all the other culturally enriching experiences one can do on their doorstep as well. In fact, I would say an interest in travel and the curiosity to explore different places goes hand in hand with a desire to further one’s cultural knowledge and experiences in other ways. School holidays in the UK are, what, 3-4 months of the year? It’s unlikely that kids are taken travelling the whole time. Instead, families do a combination of travelling and cultural activities in their town/city.

Yes, it's all the deals. And if you factor in what you get for your money doing AI with a couple of kids, thats most meals, often ice creams and some drinks in the day, etc, you do save.

I haven't said it's not worth doing at all, I've just challenged the idea that it's always this wonderful cultural experience. I think people are too quick to dismiss the cultural experiences you can have on your own doorstep. I've met people where I live who have schlepped their kids to Greece, Spain and Italy, yet have never taken their kids down the road to see the thousands of birds nesting on the local cliffs, or taken them in the local free museum.

Those same kids, with whom I work at school, when asked about their holiday, spent most of it at the resort in the pool. My argument is, I'm struggling to see how much more enriched a seven year old who has been to a resort in Spain is than the child who had some great days out at home.

It's not worth more just because you have to get on a plane to do it. It's not worth more because the waiter has a foreign accent. It doesn't intrinsically have more cultural value by virtue of being abroad.

Just because something wasn’t as good as it was in the 1990s and 2000s that doesn’t mean it should be written off and isn’t worth doing. Most things were better then (90s fanatic here…).

I have never done AI, but the ‘kids get a free place’ offers you mentioned have just unlocked a mystery for me. I can’t for the life of me understand why families pay for AI, including families supposedly on a budget, because whenever I’ve idly researched AI options, they are always, ALWAYS, more costly than a hotel or AirBnB and eating out, and we don’t exactly slum it with our accommodation choices. But it is either just me or me & DP travelling, so no free places.

We had a similar experience on a Greek island two years ago (maybe it was the same one) but compared with the 90s when it didn't matter where you went in Greece, that would be your experience, it's now harder to find on a budget.

And even where we were, our Greek hosts told us their heyday was in the 90s/early 2000s and it was hard for them to compete with the more recent complexes built on the island which were all-inclusive. Added to that, we noticed some empty apartment buildings in the area and asked about it. They were locally run businesses that were victims of COVID.

To survive, the little local tavernas and apartments are having to charge more. We don't have children, but for families on a budget, AI, or larger resort areas will be more economically viable.

It might not 'all' be Britain in the Sun, but increasingly it's going to be all many families can afford. We don't even have kids and we find it harder now to find local-run low budget holidays. All the AI places have special kids go free offers, room deals, food deals, etc.

I think the impact of mass tourism is completely overblown. While I agree with you that travel has changed over the last few decades and become more accessible to people, it doesn’t mean that travelling overseas won’t broaden your horizons one bit as everywhere is basically Britain with a nicer climate (an argument I see a lot on MN). I went to a popular Greek island in summer 2024 that attracts a lot of British and other tourists, but while there I stayed in a hotel where every staff member was Greek, I found a cute little cove with one single ramshackle beach bar serving local beer and Greek light snacks. Every night I had dinner in Greek restaurants run by Greek people and which served food and wine local to the island. I did some hiking in terrain that is very different from anywhere near where I lived at the time. Was it as authentic an experience as my gap year in South America years ago, or when DM and DAunt backpacked Eastern Europe in the 1980s? Almost certainly not. Was it still a culturally enriching experience that broadened my horizons and gave me a break from the norm? Absolutely.

”If it was that bad planes wouldn’t exist”

?😂

We travel a lot with our kids because we have family abroad, and honestly, it's so stressful sometimes, I can totally understand why people who are perhaps less used to travelling anyway would be reticent to do it with their kids. We travel abroad 2-4 times a year on average, but I decided I wanted to go somewhere different next year, and looking at the early flight times, complex journeys, having to hire a car and sort out car seats for the children, thinking about how we'll get around with a child who's too big for a pushchair but still too little to have the stamina for really long walks, then the thought of parenting young kids (which is already often overwhelming at home) except doing it abroad, without any of their stuff, and where they'll probably hate all the food, just seems so stressful. I know it'll be worth it, and we are still going to do it, but honestly I can understand why others don't, when their kids are young at least.

Yes, the thing that’s intriguing me is that all of the OP’s close friendship group can apparently afford to go on holiday but don’t, and say similar things about ‘not knowing how airports work/where to go”.

I don't know where you live, but I live in the UK. It's not remotely a dull country. It has spectacular scenery, fascinating historical buildings/ruins, museums, theatres, etc.

Your friends sound odd.

You sound overly bothered by the choices they are making.

Haven’t experienced this at all. We took our kids away unless it was for our anniversary and PIL minded them (very rare). When they were younger it was ‘easy’ holidays but as they got older we did more cultural/sightseeing breaks.
So they don’t go on holiday at all? That is odd - everyone needs a break from ‘the norm’.

I’ve never heard of anyone NOT taking their kids unless it’s a special anniversary break or something but few and far between.

Increasingly, though, with the rise and rise of All Inclusives, people aren't eating different food, the kids are playing with the other Brit kids in the resort, etc.

It's getting harder and harder now to have affordable holidays that aren't so catered to the tourist that you'll be lucky to meet anybody from the country you are in unless they are serving you (and, increasingly, not even then, which is part of the current issue with tourism).

I went abroad twice as a child, once was to Greece. I fondly remember playing with the Greek child whose parents owned the apartment we stayed in. These days, it's hard to find locally owned establishments that give you that connection. Even Airbnbs are more likely to be owned by an offshore investor now.

For me, mass tourism has changed the travel experience so that it really isn't this amazing experience of other cultures any more. I travelled across Morocco for the first time in the 90s. Barely saw any other white tourists except in Marrakech. Spent a lot of time drinking tea with locals, chatting to the owners of the very basic places we stayed. Highlight, for me, was the trip out into the desert. One building staffed by Berbers arose out of the sand after we travelled over a rough road from Erfoud. We were the only group there, had a great night chatting to the Berbers, etc.
Fast forward to 2013, we went back. Where that one building was is now a big complex, with 4x4's zipping over the desert, accessed by a tarmacked road and about four times as expensive. Still at least run by hospitable Berbers, but how long before that changes? How long before the multinationals buy the locals out, as has happened in so many other places? How long before the strangling monopoly of AI steamrollers in and shoves the locals out?

Wherever we go, we like to go local. Stay in locally owned accomodation, eat at local places. That is getting harder and harder to do.

You created the thread to question why everyone isn't exactly like you, we're giving reasons.

Gosh, the argument got even sillier, I didn't think that possible.

Well I've never heard of anyone being impressed by 2 hours in a sticky floored Playbarn and a bubble disco to S Club 7 but I think kids should have the parties they want to have, within reason of course.

DD's had the whole class in the past but this year she's having only the girls as that's what she wanted.

The point I was making is that organising parties is a bit of a slog for everyone but we do it because it's part of what makes childhood for many children- whether that's the whole class in a soft play or 3 best friends at a sleepover or whatever.

This is a spectacularly silly post. Maybe you should pay more attention to Susan from down the road.