How do you find hotels with connecting rooms or two bedroom suites?

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My kids are now 13 and 10 and we've decided its too much to all squash into one hotel room for a week. We've done Tui a few times which was great when the kids were little but the family rooms are just too tiny for us all now.
A quick look seems to show that a Villa is out of our budget, plus i don't want to have to hire a car to get around...?

Can anyone recommend a way to find either hotels with 2 bedroom suites (that don't cost an absolute fortune) or hotels with connecting rooms? Have tried booking.com type sites and they don't seem to have a filter for connecting rooms or hotels with 2 bedroom aparthotel style accommodation?

How does everyone else do it as their kids get older? Do you just book two hotel rooms and put an adult in with each kid? That seems like a weirdly separate way for us to do it and presumably there's no guarantee you would get your rooms next to each other so you might be at the other side of a resort? Advice needed please!

FYI - we're thinking Greece, Italy or Croatia if that helps?

Travel Agent.
I arrange most holidays myself but if I want a package deal or have a special request I use a local independent.
She has access to deals etc that I don't and at most I pay the brochure price and often less. She sometimes get me free upgrades too and if I need help before I go or when I am there I can message her

How big are the hotels you're looking at and how much do you trust your kids to be responsible?
When we did family holidays with the 6 of us (2 parents, 4 kids) we got split across different rooms, even different floors. Wasn't a big deal.
Definitely would have been a skiing holiday where I (11) shared with my 2 sisters (9 and 12). And that place had a broken elevator that cut out until someone called it again! We kids thought it was fun kind of scary going down to meet our parents at the restaurant for dinner haha.
But I was babysitting at 12, same with my older sister and older brother, so pretty responsible and independent.

Edit: Just seen you mentioned resorts, maybe try looking at smaller ones so less chance of being too far apart? I would put the kids together if they're happy to share, twin beds if need be.

We have found that it's often worth contacting hotels you like the look of directly and asking if they have suitable connecting rooms or suites. Quite often they do but it's not possible to establish this via booking systems.

Not sure what your budget is but I can recommend both the Grand Hotel Rovinj (Croatia) and Hotel du Lac et du Parc in Riva del Garda (Lake Garda, Italy) for interconnecting rooms/suites.

I would suggest independent travel agent and asking locally on FB groups.

You can also check the individual hotel websites and see if they offer different room types but I found that often they classify a 12 year old as an adult.

We had luck twice with the Rui hotels, once in Tenerife and once in Spain, Costa de la Luz.

If you go on Tui and click you want one room, it will come up with everything from family rooms to 2 bedroomed family rooms to villas. It’s quite tedious having to sift through, but it can be done.

Search for 6 people (4 adults, 2 kids) and it will show you the 2 bedroom apartments. You can find one you like then search again for the right number of people.

Does the accommodation not show when you are booking so you can upgrade to an extra bedroom apartment for a supplement?

In TUI and Jet2 you have to look at each hotel and see what room types they have, to find the cost you have to click continue so it let's you choose the room types. There was a thread with some recommendations a while ago - ill try to find it

We have the same issue.

I believe that some travel agents have some software that shows this fairly easily, at least for bigger package type hotels. Unfortunately for smaller boutique/independent hotels you do have to look through every bloody room type.

My kids aren't really old enough for this and I wouldn't be able to relax or sleep at all without them nearby in the same apartment or one of us in with them if in separate rooms. In hotels and resorts there are just too many people with access to rooms and master keys etc.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/holidays/5094639-all-inclusive-with-2-bedrooms

Thanks to everyone who posted!

It seems like the consensus is to either try an independent travel agent or just google hotels and start contacting them individually to see what they can offer.

Seems a right faff though - maybe there's a business idea in there somewhere to start a travel website for this sort of thing - I can't be the only person with these requirements for a family holiday surely?

Appreciate the advice!

Thank you!

4 of us are going to Greece with jet2 in the summer. 3 adults and 1 child as it happens but we have a 2 bed apartment - child place was free (1 double room and 1 twin)

We look for hotels which have one/two bedroom apartments. We went to Majorca and stayed in a hotel where the room was described as a one bed apartment so we had one double room, then a door between that and the main living area which had two sofa beds....so basically like having two bedrooms and an interconnecting door.

I've got this issue too. Novotels are good for interconnecting rooms.
Package holiday websites are rubbish for it, you have to look through each listing to see if there is a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment option.
I look at the hotel's own website as well to see room layouts for large family rooms, they vary a lot.

We book via an independent travel agent. They’ve found interconnecting rooms or suites at hotels for us.

I've just checked; on jet2 you need to search for 1 room with the right number of adults/children. I imagine Greece will have a more apartments than other places. Otherwise it might be worth trying airbnb or similar - we stayed at a lovely 2 bed apartment in Croatia that had its own pool, it was a few years ago but it wouldn't have been villa type expensive.

I would recommend Spice Hotel in turkey, Antalya. Family rooms are two normal rooms connected by a little hallway so you get two bathrooms etc. brilliant for speeding up showers!

You can specify you want one room only on easyJet hols / jet2 / tui. That will bring up both fam rooms which you disregard and interconnecteds. You do pay more for the latter! Agree would be much better if you could tick a box for interconnected.

We found that some of the smaller Greek islands had 2 bedroom apartments as part of hotel complex . We stayed at Areti apartments in Skiathos but there were others to choose from. It was gorgeous

That was tui

If you’re on Facebook there is a group called ‘Family holidays with kids’ which has a list of loads of hotels which offer a 2bed option all over Europe.. sorry I don’t know how to link to it! 🫣

I know you didn’t mention Turkey but we had a great room - I think it was called a presidents room in Arum Barut Hotel near Side. It’s just over an hour from Antalya airport.

It has a double room, a twin room, bathroom, and a living area plus a small balcony or terrace.

ETA we went with Jet2