Family-friendly places to stay don’t have to be bottom dollar or top dollar
There are no single best types of accommodation for families. The family that understands what each option offers, and where each falls short, books the right stay every time, for every trip.
Most of us default to one of two mental images when we think about where to stay with kids. On one end: hostel dorm rooms, bunk beds stacked to the ceiling, smelly backpacks piled in the corner. On the other end? High-end luxury hotels, where everything gleams, though the bill at checkout can be blinding.
Neither extreme is the full picture. The best types of accommodation for families span a wide range. Knowing how to match each type to your trip, budget, travel style, your kids’ ages, and your priorities separates an okay stay from a great one. That’s the secret of how to choose where to stay when traveling with kids.
Our family of four has traveled the world full-time since 2022. From Malaysia to Mexico to Morocco, we’ve stayed in a variety of places and types of lodging. In this guide, we’ll go over how we evaluate accommodation, based on our years of experience.
The problem with cheap bottom-dollar budget stays
First, let’s break down those extremes that trip us up when finding the best types of accommodation for families. They’re worth sitting with, because if your brain is anything like mine, it’s easy to have pre-conceived notions of travel impede the realities of finding the right place to stay.
Often when we imagine cheap, bottom-dollar budget stays, we’re imagining grubby, moldy hotel rooms, or multi-bunk-bed hostel dorm rooms with a shared toilet. You know, the ones where you’re certain the walls were painted with cigarette tar, and the towels haven’t been changed since 1973.
Cheap stays can be awesome accommodation. It’s not always dorms, either. But cheap stays can present trade-offs with privacy, shared bathing, inconvenient locations, or an atmosphere that doesn’t match what works for you.
The problem with bottom-dollar budget accommodation usually ties in more with a tricky location, a reality that doesn’t reflect the listing, or a host that isn’t responsive to addressing problems. Budget family travel accommodation doesn’t have to be gross or unsafe, but it often will require you to decide which trade-offs you’re okay with.
In our experience: New development, no groceries
Every stay has trade-offs. Our trickiest was in Tangier, Morocco. We were staying in a new apartment complex on the far eastern side of the Tangier area, as a sort of stopover to go to the nearby port for a ferry to Italy.
The apartment had a great price tag, but was tricky to keep comfortable. While new, there was minimal insulation. The space either heated quickly in the sun or got chilly quickly on cooler days. A dampness lingered, and evenings could get chilly enough to be not cold, but less comfortable than we would’ve expected.
Plus, the overall area was so new that there were very few shops or cafes around, making it harder to get more than very basic food. And it was so new that during the day, the pounding sounds of construction and machinery often filled the air.
Since we were there only a couple of nights as a way station to our ferry, it wasn’t an enormous deal. The stay made it easier to get to the port on time, and that was the bigger priority.
The problem with expensive, top-dollar luxury stays
If the classic overstuffed hostel dorm room is the clichéd travel nightmare, the top-dollar luxury hotel is usually the myth-level daydream.
Luxury hotels are beautiful. Staff can be top-notch, courteous, and want your stay to be absolutely magical.
However, luxury stays can also feel stuffy, and that you’re there more to prove that you’re there, instead of enjoying the stay and the surroundings.
Plus, when you’re at a luxury hotel, everything else is typically at a premium too. Whether it’s food, coffee, travel arrangements, or anything else, the luxury price doesn’t stop at the stay itself. It usually compounds, leading to sticker shock when you get the bill—or get home and check your credit card statement.
In our experience: When there’s no coffeemaker, is it really a luxury room?
There was a time when casinos loved my grandma.
She was a deft gambler, playing just enough to do all right, never going in the hole too much, and often winding up with a lot of love from the casino.
One year, she had been comped rooms at a fancy casino hotel in Las Vegas. Jodie and I came out from Oregon for a couple of nights. It was lovely. The hotel was beautiful.
But every time we left the room, we felt like someone was reaching into our pockets.
Coffee, for example: A free coffee maker wasn’t available. Instead, you could go to the in-house shop, whose prices were on par with what we’d pay for a bag of coffee beans.
It was a nice, luxurious experience, and we appreciated it. But the hotel came with an air of people trying to prove themselves and their status too much. It was a nice place. But it wasn’t the sort of place we’d prioritize for ourselves.
Choosing the right accommodation isn’t just about price
Price is a major factor in anyone’s travel budget. However, price alone doesn’t determine what you get out of a stay. Choosing the best types of accommodation for families is about balancing the right combination of priorities, trade-offs, and other factors, such as:
- Location: Is it convenient to get where you want to go for sightseeing and activities, or are you far away?
- Transit access: Whether snagging a rideshare or going to a nearby train station, is it easy to get the transit you need?
- Sleeping arrangements: Can you comfortably accommodate your family members? How many rooms will you need?
- Amenities: Does the room or unit include the amenities you need for comfort and necessity?
- Cleanliness: Cleanliness, sanitation, and hygiene are major health considerations, and there’s nothing like getting sick to ruin a trip.
- Privacy: Do you have the privacy you need? Are there privacy trade-offs that are acceptable for that overall stay?
- Cost: Cost isn’t just about the per-night rate. What is the impact of taxes? Is the price per-person or just for the overall unit? Are there additional fees? Do you have affordable options for food and transportation, or will where you’re staying push up those costs as well?
Types of accommodation
Whether you’re a seasoned family traveler or just starting to explore the wide world of travel with kids, there are so many types of accommodation around the world. Here’s a quick, family-focused breakdown.
Quick note: While we’ve camped with tents, a pop-up camper, and a motorhome, we’re excluding RVing, camping, and glamping with kids options from this list. It’s not as relevant to how most families will be traveling.
Hotels
From local, independent, solo properties to global brands that are household names, the world of hotels is about as varied as travel options come. Hotels can be a preferable way to stay, a treat, or a practical, logistical choice for a specific situation. Many properties also have family rooms in hotels, such as bunk beds for kids, or suites with multiple rooms.
Hotels span a broad range of price and amenities. That’s a great thing, too. With so many options at so many price points and in so many locations, families are much more likely to find the right hotel option for them.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
Our family uses hotels in certain situations, such as:
- Less than a one-week stay. More than that, we’ll prefer a vacation rental for its amenities and spaciousness.
- Convenient location. It’s often easy to find hotels close to major tourist attractions, dining, or transit hubs. When we can balance price with convenience and time savings, we might choose a hotel in a convenient location.
- Helpful amenities. Whether it’s a pool, included breakfast, or in-room kitchen, we’ll aim to match amenities with what we need out of a stay.
- Practical waypoint. For a one- or two-night stay before changing countries, for example, we might book a hotel near the airport, train station, or port. For example, when we were taking a trans-Pacific cruise from Seattle to Japan, we booked a two-night stay at a hotel that put us within a 20-minute rideshare of the port.
Brands and beyond
Major global brands can be easy to turn to. If you have a preferred hotel brand, it’s worth checking options for them anywhere you go. Plus, those global brands (such as IHG) have multiple umbrella brands that may be destination-specific or specialize in a particular type of stay. In the USA, we’ve had great experiences with independent hotels, as well as larger chains such as IHG, Best Western, and the Home2 Suites by Hilton.
However, many countries have their own brands too, but international visitors are less likely to know about them. For example, Japanese hotel chains such as MIMARU and Hotel MyStays are often great options for families.
Our preferred way to book hotels
When we’re prioritizing a hotel stay, we check brands we prefer.
For example, when planning a 3-night stay in Kyoto, we looked into vacation rental options, but kept finding that many of the hotels had excellent locations and, at the lower-demand time we were visiting, attractive rates.
While we could’ve considered various larger brands, the Village Kyoto—a local, family-friendly hotel with tatami floors, Japanese breakfast options, and an excellent onsen—won us over. The savory scent of each morning’s fresh breakfast only reinforced how good a choice we had made.
We’ll sometimes book hotels directly, especially with brands where we’re part of their loyalty program. Often, we use Booking, and especially in Asia, we use Agoda a lot too.
When we seek a global brand we know, and especially when we need a hotel in the USA, the IHG brand is our current preferred go-to option. We especially enjoy Holiday Inns in the USA, as we find a consistent, clean, comfortable stay, helpful staff, and, usually, an included hot breakfast.
Our favorite hotel booking sites
Vacation rentals (such as through Airbnb and VRBO)
When we talk about vacation rentals with kids, this can be a condo, townhouse, or apartment rentals for families, especially accommodation for extended family trips. For these stays, such as home or holiday apartments for families, we could be talking about a few days, or possibly even a few months.
Especially for stays longer than a week, and especially when we want to stay in one place for 28 or 30 days, we typically opt for a vacation rental. Apartments, condos, houses, townhouses, you name it: As a family of four who’s visited multiple countries and has traveled since 2022, we find that vacation rentals consistently offer us the best mix of space, amenities, location, and price. Since it has a kitchen, self-catering accommodation offers excellent value, as we have more options for how we eat.
Rentals can take some other forms too. Sometimes families stay in a destination for three months. That’s a not-uncommon option for travelers in a country where they can stay up to 90 days visa-free, for example. These stays sometimes mean working out an arrangement more akin to a short-term lease, and there may be deposits or other fees required.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
Our favorite way to use vacation rentals with kids is for longer stays.
- Residential locations. Especially for longer stays, we love being in neighborhoods and residential areas. We enjoy the quiet. It’s usually easy to access public transportation, and we find we can get a sense of day-to-day life.
- Cooking. Rentals have kitchens! Having the option to store and prepare food saves us money, and we prefer not having to dine out for every meal. For example, we love visiting Da Nang, Vietnam, and often seek rentals near the beach. We love that there are lots of affordable dining options, but we can have breakfast in our apartment, along with easy snacks and groceries for cooking lunch and dinner.
- Price breaks. We often stay 28 or 30 days in one area, and many rentals will offer special rates for longer stays. In fact, we’ve sometimes seen stays where the discounted rate for a 28-night stay is the same as a 14-night stay. It’s getting double the stay for half the pay!
- Space. As of when I’m writing this, we have a tween daughter and a teen son. We love it when our stays can balance common space for family togetherness. Now that our kids are older, we book places where they can each have their own room. It’s a home comfort for them, and they’ve told us it gives them security and space that helps them enjoy travel more.
Our preferred way to book rentals
Personally, we only book through Airbnb. We prefer the platform’s intuitive usability, can easily manage communications with our host, and find that it usually has the most and best options for many destinations we want to visit.
Vrbo is another option. As bloggers and creators, we’re even part of an affiliate program that includes Vrbo. It’s a popular platform, but we prefer the usability and scope of Airbnb.
It’s also possible to find rental listings on sites such as Facebook, or to get connected one-to-one with hosts on messaging apps such as WhatsApp. Personally, we haven’t done this. Another reason we like Airbnb is accountability under the platform, such as:
- We can check for recent reviews and gauge the host’s responsiveness
- When we’ve had an issue during our stay, hosts typically have been quick to resolve the problem or make up for it (such as a host in Mexico treating us to lunch for some construction inconvenience)
- We’d rather book a stay through our travel credit card than have to use cash or a digital peer-to-peer transfer that leaves us without recourse if there’s a problem
Many informal listings might try to skirt local rules, laws, and regulations. For example, Japan has strict legal regulations around short-term rentals (in Japanese, minpaku, or 民泊). Airbnb only shows approved listings. Sometimes people try to go under the radar by listing on Facebook. Perhaps that works for some folks, but we don’t have a comfort level with it.
For longer stays in various countries, we’ve known many families who work something out directly with a host, owner, or agent. At this point, it’s not something we’ve done, and other families have mentioned problems with the arrangement, but it can work out.
For vacation rentals, we suggest
Also check availability and options on
Hostels
No sooner do I think of hostels, and I go back to my twenties, with my huge backpack and a passport full of visas for the UK, Ireland, India, Thailand, Cambodia, China, and beyond.
I love hostels. During my first international trip, a semester student exchange in Edinburgh, Scotland, I stayed in a hostel for about a week while I found a flat. Whether cooking in the shared kitchen, making friends in the common room, using the central location for easy sightseeing, or soaking in the air of excitement and adventure, hostel stays are part of beloved travel memories for my younger adult self, as well as some of my and Jodie’s couples trips to Australia and Canada.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
Dormitory-style, multi-bunk bed rooms are still a mainstay. However, modern hostels cater to a broader range of travelers, from private rooms for solo travelers or couples to family rooms.
We have occasionally considered hostels as a family, but they typically haven’t been a worthwhile option. There was one place in Singapore (now closed) that had a shared bathroom and shower area, more like a hostel, but we had our own room. It was sort of a hostel, but still called itself a hotel. I suppose we could say that counts.
Hostels usually work best when they’re cheap, have a great location, and you can use the shared kitchen. They can be a great option when trying to connect with other travelers.
The atmosphere and vibe vary too. I once stayed in a hostel near Dublin’s Temple Bar area, and it wasn’t uncommon to find vomit in the sink every morning (not mine, either, by the way). Would I stay there with my kids? Heck no.
However, we’ve also stayed at a place in Kyoto that called itself an inn, but had the common room and communal kitchen typical of a hostel-style establishment. We loved the shared kitchen along with our private family room. It was quiet, clean, and the absolute opposite of a party palace.
The price and convenience of rentals often edge out hostels for families
The rise of vacation rentals, though, has given families a much better range of options than hostels can match. Like hostels, rentals typically have great locations, amenities such as a kitchen, and you’ll always have your own bathroom.
For us as a family, we prefer rentals so we can balance family space and private space. Plus, when we want downtime, we prefer privacy and relaxation. As a family of introverts, when we’re out and about with other people, we want to unwind in our own space with no one else around.
Plus, hostels often charge per person. The numbers alone often make a rental a better value for a family. Even if the rental costs a little more, the privacy alone is typically more worthwhile.
Our preferred way to book hostels
Hostel availability varies a lot globally. They’re most prevalent throughout the UK, Europe, and Southeast Asia. You can often find them in any major city, not to mention various parts of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The only two hostel-ish places we’ve stayed at, we booked through Booking and Agoda. Those are excellent resources, along with the hostel-centric platform Hostelworld.
Check hostel availability worldwide
Bed & breakfasts (B&Bs)
Ah, the B&B. Some of Jodie’s and my favorite couple’s stays were at a B&B on the Oregon Coast, Canada’s Saturna Island, and more.
But we have yet to stay at a B&B with our kids.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
We haven’t even considered a B&B. We typically associate B&B stays with small rooms and quiet spaces that are more centered on adults than catering to families.
I’m sure there are family-centered B&B’s out there. Personally, it’s not a type of stay we prioritize or seek.
When Jodie and I are traveling as a couple again, though? Sure, I bet then we’ll be happy to bring more B&B’s into the mix.
Our preferred way to book B&B
If we were looking for a B&B, we’d start with big platforms such as Booking or Expedia. Since B&Bs are smaller operations, though, we’d also look at individual properties and possibly book direct.
Inns, ryokans, and other types of stays
Of course, the world of accommodation isn’t just the ones above. Inns, Japanese ryokans, college dorms, house-sitting, you name it: there are so many other ways to stay:
- Inns: Nowadays, an “inn” is a hotel or B&B that’s using a historically snazzy term.
- Ryokans: Traditional Japanese inns that usually offer varying degrees of luxury and comfort, traditional breakfasts (sometimes a special dinner too), and on-site onsen.
- College and university dorms: When school isn’t in session, it’s not uncommon for colleges, especially public universities, to offer their dorms and other rooms for rent. Universities often have excellent locations, so this can be worth checking out. You’ll typically need to check out the individual school and possibly call or message someone in the dormitory or residence department.
- House-sitting: We’ve only done one house-sit and really enjoyed it, but we’ve talked with other families who love to do house-sits, especially when their kids can help take care of animals. Trusted Housesitters is an excellent resource.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
The main one we’ve used is the Japanese ryokan. When we go somewhere in Japan for, say, 2-4 nights, we check ryokan options. They’re often an affordable luxury, and the comfort is excellent. Ryokan gave our kids a taste for Japanese breakfasts, and Jodie and I love a good onsen soak.
Especially now that our kids are getting older, we’re also considering trying out the university option. It could be a good way not only to have a stay but also to give our kids an introduction to what it’s like to be on a college campus. As we explore those options, we’ll update this piece with our observations and conclusions.
Our preferred way to book other accommodation
You’ll have some variety. Many inns or ryokans will probably be on the same platforms as hotels, such as Booking, Expedia, or Agoda.
Trusted Housesitters is its own platform where members make sitting arrangements.
For other options, such as a college dorm, it’ll likely be particular to that property. You’ll figure out the process as you go.
All-inclusive resorts for families (on land or at sea)
You know what? Sometimes, you just want to chill. Around the world, all-inclusive resorts offer an easy, relaxed way for families to unwind within the confines of one option-rich resort.
After all, sometimes when we travel, we want to delve deep into experiences, engagement, and activities. It’s also okay to have times when all you want to do is relax by the pool, or simply chill without having to worry about day-to-day chores.
All-inclusive resorts can be exactly the right stay for that vacation-style chill time.
We’d point out that all-inclusive resorts aren’t just on land. They’re at sea too.
While you can find family-friendly all-inclusives all over the world, a cruise can be another type of all-inclusive. After all, on a cruise, your cabin, meals, housekeeping, and many activities are all covered under one fee.
A cruise can be round-trip, such as many Caribbean or Mediterranean cruises. They can also serve as transportation, such as taking one-way or repositioning cruises across the Atlantic or Pacific. That way, your time at sea is both getting to a destination and a time to have many days where you can relax.
What we consider and how we use this type of stay
During our first year of travel, we found an amazing resort hotel with a wonderful deal in Chiang Rai, Thailand. We’d spent a couple of months getting used to traveling full time.
Staying a few nights in a lush hotel room, with an excellent pool and water park on site, not to mention affordable food options and including a sumptuous buffet breakfast, gave us a chance to recharge, check in, and talk through how things were going. From our balcony, we admired a tall Buddha statue on a faraway hill. The kids giggled as they ate lunch on barstools in the pool.
Repositioning cruises have become another type of all-inclusive stay for us—plus the cruise helps us change locations. In 2024, we took a 15-night cruise from Seattle to Yokohama, teeing us up for a 3-month stay in Japan. We treated those two weeks at sea as a vacation: mostly offline, lazing with a good book, and snuggling up to watch the waves while enjoying a soft-serve chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream.
Our preferred way to book all-inclusives
How you book is going to depend a great deal on the property, stay, or cruise line. The Chiang Rai hotel we stayed at? We found the deal on Agoda and snapped it up. You might find other opportunities through regular booking platforms, but also check out the property’s own site for other options or deals.
As of this writing, we’ve only booked two cruises, and both have been through a cruise agent, at no extra charge to us. For cruises, check individual lines directly, and also check out deals on sites such as Cruise Critic, CruiseMapper, and Repositioning Cruise.com.
The key factors we check and consider for any type of stay
No matter the type of stay, some things are consistently important in determining whether we consider it a good accommodation choice for our family:
- Recent reviews, especially reviews from the past 6 months
- Host responsiveness, especially when problem-solving for a guest
- Personal knowledge of brand
- Cost
- Location convenience
- Amenities
Recent reviews matter the most to us
Understanding our priorities has helped us know where we’ll compromise and where we won’t. For example, if a listing or host does not have recent reviews, we won’t stay there. We’ve known families whose stay wound up being full of mold—and it turned out the most recent reviews were from years ago.
By gauging recent reviews and how responsive a host is, we’ve found that we can make the best decisions for our family and for what matters to us at top priorities.
The best deal balances your no-compromise priorities with where you’re flexible
What turns out to be the better deal? It’s all a matter of how these priorities balance out. Each family will have different priorities, and what you pick will also depend on what’s available.
For example, when we wanted to stay on Japan’s island of Kyushu, we thought we’d stay for a month in the island’s biggest city, Fukuoka. However, we could not find a vacation rental that would work well for a family. Instead, we picked month-long stays in Kumamoto and in Oita City.
Drop the pre-conceived notions. Let the options surprise you.
We let places surprise us. For a visit to Europe’s Baltic region, we originally thought we’d stay only briefly in Helsinki, Finland. Then we found a wonderful, spacious, reasonably priced apartment near the city center and stayed for a month.
Knowing your priorities matters. So does leaving room for the unexpected. Destinations can surprise you, and when you see what they offer, that’s where you can often make the best choices, even when they’re not the choices you initially expected.
Stop searching for the perfect stay. Start searching for the right one.
Every family’s travel priorities are different, and so is every trip. Finding the best types of accommodation for families doesn’t mean choosing between high-cost luxury and bottom-dollar budget. Every stay has trade-offs. The prepared family knows where they’ll bend and what they won’t compromise on.
A two-week rental in Genoa, Italy, brought some of my favorite moments from our family travels. We’d come to Genoa because it was the destination for a two-day ferry from Tangier, Morocco, and figured that was reason enough to stay awhile in this corner of northwestern Italy.
Our flat, high on a hill, had bunk beds for the kids, a beautiful primary bedroom for me and Jodie, and one of the best kitchens we’d had in years of travel. Many an evening found the four of us in there together. The kids sat at the bar helping with food prep, Jodie and I enjoyed a glass of wine, and we all breathed in scents of pasta and sauce cooking. In the mornings, the living room windows framed buttery light on sandstone buildings and the sea beyond.
We booked Genoa because that’s where the ferry landed, but we had no idea what was waiting for us. Keeping an open mind, we found a listing that looked promising and enjoyed two of the best weeks we’ve had on the road.
Finding the right stay isn’t about booking the hotel mentioned in an article or flashily filmed in an influencer’s video. It’s about knowing what matters to your family, understanding your options, and letting the right place find you. With so many types of accommodation for family travel to choose from, confidence comes faster than you’d think.
When you understand how and when to use different types of accommodation, you realize there’s no such thing as “the perfect stay.” The best place to stay is the one that suits your family.
