Hi, I’m looking for some inspirations for hotels / reaorts / holidays for next year. We have two kids who are currently 6 & 3 (so will be 7 & 4 when we travel next.
Probably our best holiday in recent years has been to the Valamar Tirena hotel in Dubrovnik.
Why we liked it:
- Bus ride into Dubrovnik for sightseeing / culture
- huge indoor and outdoor play area the kids absolutely loved (where parents could go too so not so much a kids club though they did have one too).
- although we went out of season (oct half term) which was too cold for the outdoor pools, we had access to the indoor pool in the hotel next door
- although it was October the weather was still warm enough for T-shirts and shorts.
- booked half board so could go out for the day but come back to buffet restaurant where we didn’t have to worry too much about kids being noisy and misbehaving.
- Had interconnecting rooms so the kids had their own sleeping space so could get them to bed at a decent time without all of us going to bed early.
I’d go back in an instant except Dubrovnik is a small place and we kind of feel we’ve seen / done it so looking for something equivalent somewhere else (flexible on location and time of year as long as in school holidays). We also got a very good deal when they reopened following refurbishment and it’s now much more expensive. My daughter (6) still raves about this hotel even though it’s been more than 18 months since we were there.
Since then we’ve tried:
- Gut Wenghof - a very family friendly hotel near Salzburg in Austria. Really loved the location and hotel, the only downside was that we were the only English speakers there (everyone else German) - this was fine for us but meant the kids couldn’t really join in or make friends. They also didn’t really like being left in the kids club (youngest was too young anyway) though there were plenty of other things to entertain them.
- A family friendly resort in lanzarote (H10 Lanzarote Gardens) at Easter - liked the buffet restaurants again and family rooms, pool area was lovely but kids hated being dumped in the kids club and there wasn’t a huge amount more to do. The weather also wasn’t as good as we’d hoped.
- Eurocamp La Vallee in Normandy - nice site but small and not that much to do other than the swimming pools (and weather wasn’t great again). The onsite restaurant had limited choice and poor service and we struggled to find family friendly restaurants nearby so eating out was a problem and stressful with small kids. Didn’t really have good enough facilities to self-cater either as no oven.
So where do we go next year? Please share any hotels / resorts you’ve had good experiences off that we might enjoy based on the above.