Holiday car seat

[captaincake]

We're going on holiday in November. DS still fits in his infant carrier at the moment but do you do when the don't? He might not in November and if he does he won't when we go away again next year. It is all inclusive but there'll be a coach transfer to the hotel and when we go away next year it'll be a hire car job. I know hire cars do hire car seats but are they in decent condition/do they have rear facing ones? Is it better to take your own? The ones we have currently are very heavy and I can't see it being easy to take either of them. does anyone have a decent but more lightweight seat? It's so much easier with infant carrier or HBB it's that stage in-between.

They won't have extended rear facing seats for sure. From what I have seen it's usually a group 123 so booster with harness.

Most airlines carry a car seat for free now - even Ryanair. But it depends where you are flying to and from. DS' hbb was damaged when we flew from a small airport without a separate bulky baggage drop point. Just a small crack visually, but the cover was half off so you could tell it had been thrown around. But when we flew from Stansted, it was fine twice. I ddothink that airports pay to replace them, but it was late and I was too tired to complain and it was only a £30 one.

I bought the JOIE Tilt as a holiday seat. It's a lightweight stage 0+/1 seat which is ERF to 18kg. It's seat-belted only seat (no ISOFIX) and in my experience fits in a wide range of cars (occasionally in a hire car it didn't fit well in the outside seat due to buckle crunch but we were always able to fit it in the middle seat).

It does have a small shell and my on-the-small-side 3 year old is outgrowing it despite being less than 13kg but it's done us fab service and I got it for only £90. Definitely worth considering IMO...

Thanks for the replies. I think a holiday/for granny's car seat might be a good option. The tilt seat sounds perfect for that I will take a look. We usually fly ba and I know they would replace it if it was damaged but this time we're going thomson as it's an all inclusive one. I will get a bag for the infant carrier and pad it out.

Update. We eventually bought the joie steadi as I found the tilt a bit time consuming to strap in rear facing.