Hotel stay with a toddler - is it doable?

[bubbles2021]

We’re planning a city break next month with our 18 month old toddler. Is it doable to stay in a hotel with a child that young and would you get a junior suite or interconnected rooms? The latter will obviously be far more expensive but at least we wouldn’t wake him up when going to the bathroom etc?

I suppose we’d also have to go to bed when he does (7.30!) which would be a bit of a pain. Any advice?

@Tooembarrassingtomention

You just ask for a cot bed or a roll away bed Simple and much better than Airbnb which you will be cleaning and cooking in

I would 100000 times rather self-cater with little children, even without the HUGE bonus that you then have an evening space, and find it quite hard to imagine how it would even work for more than a few days if you didn't - horses for courses!

It was a nightmare for us. If DS wanted milk we couldn't just do it for him. Same for food.

Agree Aparthotel is the way to go because you have your own kitchen.

If it’s just a night or 2 then it’s fine. Not great, but doable. We usually end up watching the iPad in the dark after the hour long bedtime battle (kids usually go straight down at home) and falling asleep early. Take snacks so you can feed kids and not have to trek out for a proper meal or listen to the whining for food from 6am

Anything longer than that I definitely prefer somewhere with a separate bedroom and also a kitchen. Eating out 3 times a day with little kids is not particularly enjoyable (well for us anyway) and also DH and I can have an evening that’s not lying silently in bed in the dark

2 kids under five we have done this 3 or 4 times a year since the first was born when visiting family and going round the country and often go for a family room albeit in travellodge.

Fussy kids often fall asleep better in familar surrondings, each hotel room and bathroom is like a carbon copy of the next if you always use the same brand of hotel. Youngest is 2 and to avoid the bedtime battle he sat in his pushchair in the room lastime while i rocked him to sleep before he was carried into bed.

If you are worried about kids falling out without bedguards we have found that the legs go under quite nicely to make it montessori friendly and we rearrange the foldaway bed locations to suit us

All the travellodges we have done have allowed one end of the room to be quite dark so the kids have settled quite well.

My biggest tips tho to make this an enjoyable break , easy snacks and drinks, bananas and apples, individual pots of porridge, cereal bars, pastrys. Try to avoid fridge goods although we have found a bag of icecubes over 2 pints of milk in the sink over night to keep things fresh for individual cereal packets in the morning as long as everything is watertight is a godsend plus our toddler is very partial to his glass of milk upon waking. We have also ordered takeaway to the hotel to avoid the eat out battle when little ones are impatient and tired. It is often easier to have the big meal out middle of the day and do sandwiches and snacks for tea!

Tablets preloaded with downloaded favourite shows and a couple of small toys, such as a car, pack of snap cards or a colouring book and pencils can keep most kids entertained for a few days easy enough especially if wear them out while on your break.

Enjoy the break! we found the more you do it while they are young the easier they adapt.

Goodness don't go to bed at 7.30 ! Pop him in his buggy wrapped up and you can go for a walk, he can fall asleep. You might get away with a night cap in the hotel bar with him if he nods off .
I can't believe people sit there with headphones in and go to bed at baby times on their holidays !
An 18 month old doesn't need formula and bottles etc so should be very portable. You can get cartons of follow on milk for bed time that don't need to be refrigerated. For one or 2 nights this will be fine .

We did it often using a portable travel cot. Sometimes we took DS down to dinner with us in a buggy and he slept. Sometimes we plugged in the baby monitor and kept an eye on his cot from the restaurant /bar. If we had a balcony we'd put him to sleep in the cot and then sit outside with a pack of cards and a bottle of wine.

Of course it’s doable. I would get a suite though where there is a living room plus bedroom so you have a place to be when they are asleep.
We once lived in a hotel for 3 months with an infant and toddler when we moved internationally and were waiting for our home to be finished (construction delays).

Goodness don't go to bed at 7.30 ! Pop him in his buggy wrapped up and you can go for a walk, he can fall asleep. You might get away with a night cap in the hotel bar with him if he nods off .

I get why people recommend this for a Mediterranean trip in summer, where you can stroll about a lovely warm evening, have a drink or even eat outside, etc. It sounds like the OP is planning a trip to a UK city in October, in which case trudging around at night to get the baby asleep in a pram sounds much grimmer than watching the iPad in bed!

We've done this loads of times and it's always ok. Yes going to bed as the same time as ds is a pain but it's not too bad really. Better than being in an air B and B without any child proofing or stair gates - we won't be doing that again in a hurry!

We’re on one right now, only because we’re staying at a theme park for a couple of nights. Otherwise we usually stay in a two-bed somewhere which is far, far better.

We have a travel cot with it’s own mattress and a black out blind, and we just put him to bed slightly later at 8pm and we were exhausted so we just went to bed at the same time as him to be honest, listened to him chat to himself for half an hour before nodding off 😂 it’s absolutely fine but we switch to an air bnb for a few days after this.

We've done a few mini breaks now, in family rooms - but he's fine asleep while we watch TV, quietly chat etc. Doesn't seem to bother him. He's almost 3 now, but we've done little trips when we could since about 18 months. We take follow on toddler milk if the room doesn't have a fridge and we take fruit and yoghurt pouches, granola bar/ wrapped croissant or brioche and a piece of fruit for a breakfast for him as soon as he wakes up and then go down to hotel breakfast when we're ready. He obviously only nibbles at the second breakfast!

He loves staying in hotels , he seems to think its a real treat :)

To answer the person who said they couldn’t understand those of us who talk about going to bed at baby times…we have done different things at different times but after a long active day outdoors or chasing after our two crazy kids it’s lovely to sometimes have an enforced early night, esp as we both work full time and are usually running on empty. To be honest we used to do this on ski trips even before kids - ski all day, dinner as soon as the restaurant opens, maybe a night cap in the bar and then a blissful early night of excellent mountain air / ski exhaustion sleep.

@bubbles2021

We’re planning a city break next month with our 18 month old toddler. Is it doable to stay in a hotel with a child that young and would you get a junior suite or interconnected rooms? The latter will obviously be far more expensive but at least we wouldn’t wake him up when going to the bathroom etc?

I suppose we’d also have to go to bed when he does (7.30!) which would be a bit of a pain. Any advice?

Of course it’s fine. I stayed at a hotel with my DS when he was a similar age. You just need a room big enough for him to run around in. If you can get an accessible room on the ground floor that will help in terms of pushchairs etc.

Agree with everyone else. Our kids usually co-slept with us so it was a doddle to get them to sleep anywhere we were (overnight ferry, sleeper trains etc were an absolute breeze because of this). In hotels we would get kids asleep and then we could usually have enough light on to read and even telly on low once they were properly off.

My top tips for hotels - unplug the phone as soon as you get through the door to stop little fingers playing with it. Always have the hotel travel cot but don't expect it to be good enough to put the child in. I used to keep suitcases in the travel cot to stop toddler unpacking them. There are often some electrical connections in the back of the wardrobe or under a desk. Block child access to them with the cot or a case and perhaps carry socket covers if you have a very curious child.

Put the cot bedding on the floor to use as a playmat.

Travel with a teatowel and things for kids breakfast as some other people have mentioned. Our children were always up way before breakfast started.

Watch the child can't get unsupervised access to any balcony.

Depends how well they sleep. We’ve slept in hotel rooms with our 3 year old, we just had to dim the lights etc until she’s asleep then could watch tv or whatever with volume relatively low. She’s a good sleeper though.

Our two are terrible sleepers and wouldn't go to sleep on their own anyway so we used to keep them up and everyone went to bed at 9.30. They'd sleep until 8.30 the next morning so it worked for all of us!

Entirely possible. We took DS to Barcelona when he was 1 stayed in a large room, been staying in various hotel rooms (sofa beds/camp beds/ separate areas within the roomand cruise ship cabins since. The first cruise was at 2 when DS had the sofa bed.

The secret is flexibility, don’t try and enforce home routine, let them fall asleep wherever, just go with the flow