Teens and room sizes on holiday

[loveisagirlnameddaisy]

I'm checking out holiday options for this summer; I am often stumped when it comes to selecting rooms in the search tools. When the kids were little, we would obviously opt for one room for the four of us but often the beds are small camp sized things.

We've just come back from a two night stay in York at the Grand hotel and their family room came with a luxurious super king bed for DH and me, but two fairly uncomfortable camp beds for the kids who are now 10 and 13 (13 yo is 6' tall so a camp bed is not suitable).

To posters with teen or pre-teen kids, do you opt for two rooms which really jacks the price up, or stick with family rooms? It's not even clear on some of the holiday options whether there's enough room - they just state 'double room' even though the price is for four people. help!

DD is 15 and height and weight of an young adult. 4 years ago she already complained about the sofa bed option in a hotel we stayed for 2 nights but we couldn't book another room as it was fully booked.

I had my share of self-catering over the last 4-5 years so when we looked for a hotel holiday this year I was very surprised about the lack of suitable options for teens.

We went to a Rui hotel in Tenerife which does two bedroom, proper ones with a door between and proper beds. We found one in Greece but only bookable via the hotel website, children are only up to 12 and 3 adult prices meant the 2 weeks would be £11K. No way. Other hotels we looked at were very similar.

We are now booking two rooms, we all need privacy, a one-bedroom apartement still means a dodgy sofa bed.

I think the hotel market is missing a huge point here.

We always look for rooms with a separate bedroom area and proper beds. It does reduce the options though.

Blue Lagoon Resort Kos & Stella Village Crete are two we’ve stayed in with a second sleeping area with proper single beds.

I've often looked at Ai and found options for apartments on the complex.

Where are you looking and what type of search site are you using?

We book two rooms - DS is bigger than us now, it’s not fair to make him use a crappy camp bed. It does make holidays expensive though!

What websites are you looking at? I've just done a search on Tui for a week AI with two adults and two teens and the results were showing things like 'x2 twin rooms' or 'split level family room' etc for the accommodation. They seemed to have quite detailed descriptions of the rooms as well.

They way I see it is that where you stay on holiday should at the very least be as good as your home, ideally better. I’ve never stayed all in one room and now my dcs are teens it would be awful.

@loveisagirlnameddaisy I booked it myself. I never use an agent as I prefer to do my own research! I actually chose the hotel because they have rooms with private pools so that was my main search criteria for this year. I then chose the two bedroom suite as we like as much space as possible and there wasn’t much difference in price between a one bedroom and a two bedroom. If I look at one bedroom suites I always check what the kids are sleeping on and contact the hotel if I’m unsure. Mine are both boys so they are happy to share a double (at the moment)!

Our DC were those ages when we did a big holiday last summer and we requested (and almost always got), interconnecting rooms, one double and one twin. It worked very well. Our DC are happy to share and DH and I like to have our own room on holiday. Not only is it cramped and not conducive to sleep with four people in one room, but two bathrooms is good, as is some privacy IYKWIM!

2 bed apartment or aparthotel and have lunch on the balcony/patio? Or get pizza a couple of nights?

Two rooms. Preferably inter-locking rooms.
One time we had a double sofa bed that was crap, so we asked for another single bed but it was really slim. She struggled to turn over in it, and she has a double at home. So now we book two doubles.

This. We have never ‘obviously’ shared a room unless a one nighter on the way to somewhere. It means we have to self cater but that is preferable to sharing a room with my children. We aren’t great sleepers though.

I agree it’s difficult with the searches but look for ‘suites’

Dc are 9 and 12 and we still get same room but I've never been faced with camp beds thankfully. The odd pull out bed but they were full sized and substantial. Dd2 tends to sleep in the big bed with me anyway so the pull out 3rd bed won't be used

You can find hotels have have rooms with 2 bedrooms, we had two in Cyprus and one in Madeira and have had suites where there is a double bedroom and a double sofa in the lounge. When my 2 boys got to 10 and 14 years old, we did book interconnecting rooms. Other options are aparthotels, where you get all inclusive, but get 2 bedroom apartments, this would work out cheaper.

Malama Holiday Village had 2 bedroom suite in Cyprus and Coral Bay Hotel and Spa also in Cyprus has duplex rooms with 2 bedrooms.

Lots of all inclusive hotels do family rooms with proper beds or bunk beds and a room dividing wall with sliding door for privacy or a separate bedroom

Canaries, Balearics, Turkey & Egypt have all worked for us. Search for 1 room, 2 adults, 2 kids then go through the hotels and they will be called either family room or 2 bed suite

We found when driving in France that a couple of the lower priced motel chains had really good family room options.

HotelBB do a family room with a mezzanine area with twin beds.

As a family of 5 we seldom fitted the rules on occupancy so would book an extra twin room which we would then scavenge for bedding so that DCs could make a nest in the family area.

Apart from overnight stops en route it was self catering all the way.

We Book 2 rooms, 1 adult + 1 older teenager per room (officially)

Two rooms definitely! I’d rather stay in a cheaper place with 2 rooms that squeeze into one room/a suite in a 5 star!

There are a couple of all inclusive places that have 2 bedroom bungalows in Maspalomas Gran Canaria. They look really nice and everyone would get their own bed. If we go all inclusive again, I'd go for this set up

We've just come back from an AI holiday and had interconnecting rooms which worked perfectly with the kids sharing (17 and 11). Agree that it's not always easy to find a good solution so it was one of our key criteria when choosing hotels.

i Have booked two rooms for the first time this year. Dds are 17 and 14. In 2020 we had a two bed apartment, but that was self catering. Before that the kids have always been on sofa beds.

im happy for mine to be in a separate room now and not worried if it’s not right near ours. If they were only 13 and 10 Id want them to be right next door to us or interconnecting.

We only ever shared with DC's when they were in cots, the minute they were in beds, we had side by side rooms, with bunks for the kids (in Italy), or as they got older have always had separate rooms. Yes, it costs more, but we just went on holiday once every two years instead! Not prepared to share, not comfortable, too on top of one another, and why go away, spend a lot of money, and have 1/8 of the space you have at home.

We have faced this problem with our 9 and 12 year olds - we have been disappointed in some quite fancy hotels that they are expected to share a double sofa bed. as others have said you cant go wrong with Travelodge or Premier Inns - they provide proper single beds as required.

On looking for accommodation for the hotel accommodation in mainland Europe whilst travelling to and from self catering this summer we were pleasantly surprised to find B&B Hotels - www.hotel-bb.com/en - these seem to have a double and two singles and in some cases a double and bunkbeds with the bunkbeds separated from the rest of the room - we shall see what they are like in practice. We have also booked Novotel Suites - novotel.accor.com/gb/discovering-novotel-hotel/suitenovotel.shtml which seem to offer double plus two singles. We are facing the fact that this year is probably the last when we will get away with booking the one room.

The AI hotel we stayed at Easter (in the Balearics) called them either family suite or 1 bedroom apartment.

DS (11) had his own room with two proper beds and a second TV, with a sliding door separating him from our room. Not sure we can go back to a single room now for all of us.

A lot of hotels have “family rooms” which are really two separate interconnecting rooms but not priced as two separate rooms. Trouble is it is nearly impossible to find/book them online. Phoning hotels directly often gets you good rates and better rooms, a bit of a faff but worth it.