Holidaying with friends - the downsides?

[rumbal]

What are the downsides with holidaying with friends? We’re thinking of renting a villa with some friends for some sun. It’d make it a lot cheaper if costs were split 4 ways instead of 2.

I think it really depends on the friends! I have some that I can holiday with without any downsides because we're on the same page when it comes to things like level of activity and they take a fair share of planning things and coming up with ideas. The ones I find hard work on holidays are those who don't like to do as much activity as I do, those who expect everyone else to do the planning and leading on activities and those who are too wishy washy to commit to any sort of plan and then change their minds at the last minute when you think they've finally come to a decision!! If you're going away with other people i think you just need to be clear what you expect from the holiday - are you just wanting to share a villa but do your own thing during the day and maybe some evenings, or do you want to spend every waking moment of the holiday in their company. If want to do your own things then you need a villa in a location that enables that. Ultimately you need to remember it's everyone's holiday so if someone wants to do something different to the rest I'd let them.

I think MiddleAgedDread has summed things up very well. You need to be clear on expectations, eg is this a case of sharing accommodation but each family doing their own thing or are you expecting to do everything together? I think clashes are most likely to arise if people have their own way of doing things and are not tolerant of others doing things differently. Potential issues could arise around what is a reasonable getting up time/bedtime/eating time, how clean and tidy you keep the villa during the stay, who cooks what when, and whether music/TV is on a lot. If you're pretty laid back about all this stuff and happy just to go along with what others want then you're less likely to fall out.

Do you or they have children? Be very clear to yourself that you are comfortable with their parenting routine and beliefs.

I don't think sharing accommodation with friends is a great idea. I wouldn't do it anyway, I couldn't cope with the lack of privacy and being "on" all the time, being careful what I wear (or don't lol!), who gets what room, who cooks, cleans, gets provisions, how expenses are shared, who picks up if others leave stuff all over the place, ah you get the drift!

I'd far prefer a cheaper option like an apartment with nice balcony etc. for just us, rather than sharing with others. We have done this many a time with our friends and it's bloody great having somewhere you can escape to and do exactly as you want. I don't think you save that much really between a shared villa with friends, or an apartment of your own. There's no price on happiness and feeling comfortable IMV!

But lots do it and enjoy it. Depends on how you tend to enjoy your hols I suppose. Have a good one, whatever you decide.

Have you actually spent long periods of time together ?
Staying overnight at each other's homes ?
Going away for weekends ?

Whatever little niggles might have arisen, they will be magnified on a holiday.
We lost some good friends this way. An example ; the other bloke's habit of leaving dirty pants & socks on the bathroom floor for his wife to pick up was seriously annoying when you are next to use the shower, & leaving coffee cups wherever he felt like abandoning them.

Make absolutely NO assumptions about anything! Talk about who is going to do what when you're there, e.g. cooking/cleaning/making beds/doing the driving, etc. And also about what kind of holiday you want e.g. lazing around vs visiting different sites/places, eating in vs eating out. Do you want to do everything together or will you do your own things? And very, very importantly, how much you're prepared to spend.

The worst holiday we had with friends was with my best friend and her family. Genuinely assumed we'd have a great time because we were such good, long-standing friends. But it turned out that having a 6 month old baby (us) with older children (them), and very, very, very different parenting styles, made it all difficult and, at times, quite tense.

You need to be compatible. We holiday with friends who aren’t necessarily our closest friends but we want the same things from a holiday and have a similar budget.

We can’t holiday with the in laws as we can’t agree on what makes a good holiday- they say a week walking in Wales and I say an all inclusive somewhere hot! Neither of us is wrong, just different.

The best holidays with friends IME are the ones where everything is laid on - so a catered hotel or chalet with activities available all day. Then there is very little to fall out over.

The worst is a self catered villa in the middle of nowhere. Very easy to find there are different expectations or resentment about all sorts of things: what food everyone likes, who cooks, who clears up, how much booze and when, kids’ bedtimes, how much sweet stuff for kids, screens, how much eating out, how many excursions, what time does everyone get up in the morning, expectations for kids behaviour and discipline approach, etc etc etc

If you want to do the villa option I would look really hard for two small villas that share a pool (may have to be part of a bigger villa cluster). And then each family can make its own choices about food bedtimes etc and you choose when to hang out together.

Depends on the friends.

It's really important to set expectations and boundaries before you even start looking for something to book.

We are on holiday with friends at the moment but it's a big hotel so we don't have to spend all day together- this suits us as we like our own space but it's clear some others in the group are a bit put out that we aren't all arranging to sit at the same spot at the beach/eat together every night.

Much easier to sort that out before you go!

Absolutely agree that you don't all have to be together all the time.
It's nice to have the option but also good to have time to yourselves & do your own thing.

Ime it depends how the friends manage their money and dc... Once we went abroad to meet up with friends... They had a daily budget. This meant refusing dc most of the time. OK it was 20 years ago but budget was €50 a day between 6 of them. Their bedtime schedule included shutting toddler dc in a dark bedroom while we all sat there pretending she wasn't screaming for hours..
We hosted one evening. Their turn they said the shop was shut. Awkward week tbh...

There are a few potential pitfalls IME:

1. That you get on great when you spend a few hours together, but actually living with them is another matter;
2. That their 'holiday style' doesn't match yours e.g. you like to explore and they just want to lie by the pool the whole time;
3. That you're happy to do your own thing, at least some of the time, but they expect to be joined at the hip and you find it stifling;
4. That one or both of them have a drinking problem and it ruins evenings out;
5. They don't pay their fair share and you end up feeling resentful.

So pick your holiday friends carefully and try to find out before you commit whether your holiday styles are going to gel, or not. As you plan to share a villa, this due diligence is doubly worth doing, because you're going to stuck with them in the same house!

I think as most people have said, communication is key here. Talk about things BEFORE you go away. Make sure everyone is going to get to do at least one thing while you're away. Decide on a budget for spending. Will your friends be wanting to go out clubbing, or lay on the beach every day? Work it all out before you go away. Try spending a weekend with them first. That usually helps decide if you're compatible. I once went away with a now ex friend to stay with her sister for a few days. Thankfully it was only in this country, and I had bought a return train ticket where it was valid to get home from the next day. My ex friend and her sister were just constantly criticizing me for what I could and couldn't eat and my lack of desire to sit in the pub all day. So we got there on the Tuesday, the Wednesday the criticizing continued, and I just found it exhausting. So on the Thursday morning, I rang my family and asked them to ring me with a fake emergency and tell me to come home. So they rang me with a fake emergency and I packed up my bag quickly and returned to the train station to get back to London and come home. I never felt guilty for doing it. I fell out with my ex friend about six months later. I never confessed what I really did or whether they sussed it that I had lied just to come home. But I learned a valuable lesson to never do that again. If I could go back in time, I would have just have said "No thank you" to the invitation and we might still have remained friends.

For this sort of thing to work out, both couples have to be very flexible. The problem is that we all like to think we are flexible in the same way we all like to think we are above average drivers. Bur in practice we are "flexible" on the things that we don't care about too much, and the things that we do care about have become axiomatic — there is no possibility for us of being flexible on them, and we maybe don't even realise that. So everyone thinks they are perfectly reasonable and yet there are gritted teeth within two hours of arriving at the villa.

I’ve tried this lots of ways and I think I’m rubbish at it. Had a friend come with us - she was flexible but incapable, like a child really, made no decisions, no ideas but was happy to complain and then pretend she hadn’t -she didn’t pay for roaming because I could do all the research for her, I had to ask her to butt out of family arguments, really infuriating to ask your dh to lift a cup and her to say leave him alone he’s on holiday. I felt like I was her tour guide, and her mammy and it was exhausting. I still haven’t really forgiven her - she tells me she had an amazing holiday - felt really relaxed. I was a mess after it. The problem is as a friend I got all these irritations in small doses, I barely noticed them - on holiday it just felt non stop and I can’t unsee.