Holiday drama

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We are organising a large family holiday - with my Husbands three siblings and his parents. There will be 9 adults and 11 children in total. We have agreed to book a large villa and all split paying for DHs parents so we have suggested we split the rest four way by sibling.

However DHs sister believes this to be unfair as she is just one adult - but she has 3 children. Everyone else is fine with this arrangement as the family sizes go from 3 to 6 anyway.

Is this unfair my DH worked it out and it would cost her more if we were to pay per head however she thinks children usually go on holiday for free...

We did as above, per person over 2yo. But you need to iron all this out now because you'll have all this again for food costs.

Advise if she cannot agree to sharing cost, that perhaps a hotel based holiday is best. Each pay for their own room on a half board basis. Lunches are paid for themselves, no bill splitting.

This would avoid issues while on holiday too.

However, totally agree with above by splitting by bedroom then equal split for parents. That is fair but for some reason your SIL can’t understand that. With that many children it’s very clear children don’t go free as they need beds to sleep in so therefore not free. I’d also wonder how she’d be able to swing that with plane tickets there!

Avoid the headache and go for individual hotel rooms.

Split it fairly and then adjust discreetly to make it affordable. If the single parent sister will find it a stretch perhaps the others could pay her share of the parents costs?
Work out the total cost eg food, transport etc too and set up a kitty.

I've been away on lots of house shares with different friends and family. Our formula is always adults full price and kids half, for both accommodation and food. Alcohol id separate, although it's usually bring your own.

It's not fair to split just by adults as kids eat a fair bit and do need a bed to sleep in

1. Holy shit this holiday sounds like my personal hell! Is there no way you can get out of it?
2. children do not go on holiday for free
3. how does she want to split it? Per adult? That’s utterly ridiculous and makes no sense at all. Per head or per bedroom if anything, or as you’ve already suggested.

1 adult = 2x
1 child = x
9 adults = 18x
11 children = 11x
Total = 29x
Cost of property = =e.g. £2000
X= 2000/29= £68.97
So each adult pays £137.94
Each child pays £68.97
Cost of grandparents split between 4 families = an additional £68.97 per family.
Cost to SIL would be £137.94. + 3x £68.97 for the children + a further £68.97 for contribution towards grandparents. £413.82.
Two adults and two children plus contribution to grandparents would cost £482.79.
For 3 children it would be £551.76
and for 4 children £620.73
If the cost of the villa was just split between the 4 families, everybody would pay £500 so Splitting it four ways equally would benefit the family with the most number of children and adults.

Counting all adults and children equally would mean she would pay £450, a couple with 1 child pay £350, with 2 children £450, with 3 children £550 and 4 children £650 ( each sibling paying £50 towards grandparent costs.

@Soontobe60 that's my kind of calculation. But how old are kids. 14yo boy probably counts as adult.

living under one roof for 10 days caused rifts in the family which have not healed 2 years later!

I had a similar experience to this^^.

One week with dh, his parents, his uncle and his siblings and one of their partners plus dcs. It brought so much to the surface and it was a totally awkward and miserable week. Disaster. I actually now rarely see some of them and actively avoid others! Not just because of the holiday, but because of what it brought out. It was always bubbling beneath the surface and the intensity of all being under one roof for a week just brought it to a head in a way which I think could have been avoided if we’d never agreed to go.

On the other hand you might have a lovely time. I will never ever do anything like it again though.

I am so glad I have managed to stay on the edge of our version of this! We are taking my mum away for a big birthday - my DSis and I, both with DHs I will have 2 children, she has none. The rest are adults, 4 couples, mum and the adult daughter of one of the couples. People are already muttering about how the cost of food and drink will be spilt because some of them like naice wine and others drink gin or local spirits but lots of it! DH and I have said from the start that we’d love to go but we are staying in our own nearby villa with our own car and we will visit in the daytimes and go for some meals together. Sadly I foresee major falling outs among the adults, especially as their only common link is mum. I do wonder if these kinds of holidays would be better if everyone booked their own apartment in a complex with a shared pool, paid their own costs and spent as much or as little time together as they wanted.

Soontobe60 has said exactly what I was going to say. We did this and counted children as under 14. It worked better for us because of cousins sharing roooms etc.

Does she normally pay half price when she goes on holiday because she is a single parent?

We’ve just been on a big family and friends villa holiday. We added it all up and then split by numbers of family members. As it was a villa and flight kids cost the same as adults. So total cost divided by 15. Then we paid for that x5 as Sil paid x 3 etc ...

Who's idea was the holiday?
Who is organising?
What are relative finances like?
Did everyone agree to the principle of the joint holiday?

If sibling one goes on a skiing and a villa holiday every year and siblings two has a week in Butlins then perhaps you should take that into account in some way...

When we've done huge family holidays everyone pretty much gets their own accommodations, usually cottages or our RVs (or RV rentals). Cramming (at this point) 12 families (the parents, my siblings & spouses, and the now adult grandchildren + their spouses and children) into one place would require Buckingham Palace to keep the peace! Plus having private space means that one has a place to go to decompress after too much 'togetherness' other than locking oneself in a tiny bedroom! And the children like the excitement of 'spending the night' in each other's cottage/RV.

We deal with meals by generally getting our own breakfasts and lunches and having each family 'host' a number of dinners divided them up. Family members sometimes combine and do joint dinners, for example my sister and I might decide to do two of our nights together and combine resources.

I agree with others that if you are 'spatting' now about costs, by the end of the holiday I predict that 70% of you will no longer be on speaking terms!