Please help me book a holiday!

[Cupofteaandbiscuits]

We have saved and saved and now can book our DCs first holiday abroad (10 and 8). We are going May half term and as it’s our first time taking children abroad we are hoping to do a package where flights and accommodation are included.
As I want it to be a good first experience for them I am overthinking it so I would love recommendations please for:

The best company to book with that ideally flies from Gatwick, Bournemouth or Southampton.

somewhere European that’s warm at May half term.

Somewhere where the rooms are clean and there is a pool outside.

we have saved £2500 so hope I’m not asking too much for that money? It’s taken so long to save!!

Personally for this sort of thing I book with TUI - you can search and filter to accommodate what you want. Your budget is pretty tight but still perfectly manageable as long as you're okay with odd flight times/self-catering. Jet2 is regarded as the cheaper option I think but doesn't fly out of those airports.

I went down a rabbit hole and there's nowhere I can personally recommend that falls below £2.5k that week, but there are lots of places in Greece/Spain which can be lovely temperatures in May. Also - many more options in your budget for flying out on the Sunday rather than the Saturday. Hope that helps a little!

Look at Italy, great food and family friendly. Euro camp is good fun and good transport connections for sightseeing.

I always use Jet2
Spain is probably the cheapest
Read reviews
Look at different days/flight times to get price down
Look for free child places
Check distance from beach - needs to be walking distance ideally for me or you're looking at buses etc which brings spending money up

Thank you so much!
we can fly the Friday as the children have an INSET which is handy.
we could stretch a little more but would reduce our spending allowance

Is Spain warm enough in May? Xx

Spain will most likely be somewhere between warm and very hot in May, especially in the south. You should also look at the Canaries, which despite being further away, is likely to cost less as May is low season there.

There's 3 star ai holidays from Gatwick available if you are able to take them out of school for an extra day (so flying on bank holiday Monday outbound returning following Monday) makes a £200 pp difference. The price includes luggage and transfers

We always use tui as LGW is easy for us. Stanstead is a pita so don't use Jet2 but family do and have no complaints. It's worth it imo to upgrade to decent flight times.