by Jane Anderson, The Daily Telegraph, January 30, 2018
As a mother and a travel writer, there are few things that set my holiday alarm bells ringing than the phrase "family friendly" looming out of a travel brand’s promotional literature. The accompanying photos invariably feature an impossibly perfect couple and their equally well-groomed 2.4 children frolicking together in a bucolic land of primary colours.
The truth of the “family-friendly” label is often rather less utopian. At its worst, they can feel like a messy and unsatisfying one-size-fits-all compromise, seemingly designed to cause maximum intergenerational stress, with the added indignity of a hefty price tag.
Allow me to lay out the four ways operators are getting it wrong: space; separation; design and food.
1. The never-ending sleepover
Consider the first element that has typified the worst offenders for my own clan: the “family room”. This entails stuffing two adults and two children into one room for their entire stay, effectively ruining the evenings for everyone, especially when the kids are very small.
Once your darlings have been packed off to bed (often grumbling because they can see their parents still awake and doing interesting things), you and your other half have two equally unpalatable options.
Either you tiptoe around in semi-darkness for hours before whispering to each other over a room service meal on the balcony.
Or you can head for the restaurant, leaving the children in the care of an unfamiliar babysitter or with a baby monitor clutched in your hand, so you never actually relax, but start at every sigh and whimper. This is clearly not an option for children old enough to object verbally.
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2. The kids’ club letdown
Element number two comes into full play during daylight hours. Now the hotel or resort switches from enforced proximity to an almost mandatory separation via the kids’ club.
At their best, kids’ clubs offer young people a wide range of activities with aspects of the local culture explored, but these come at a price. But at worst - which is far more typical - your children spend their days with lots of other kids they’ve never met before, eating nursery food between bouts of half-hearted sport on shadeless pitches or art-based “fun”.
Here are two kids’ clubs my children have enjoyed:
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The Grove, a five-star country retreat in Hertfordshire (read the full review here ), charges £10 per hour per child including drinks and snacks in its onsite crèche. Lunch costs an additional £6 per child.
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The Voyagers club from kids aged 5 years to 7 years 11 months at the Anassa in Cyprus (read the full review here ) costs €50/£42 per day including meals.
3. Primary colours overload
In addition to family rooms and kids’ clubs in the “family friendly” hall of infamy, resorts often dish out other forms of torture.
Constant “entertainment” around the pool, to a thumping Euro pop beat, renders the entire area uninhabitable for all four members of our family, while roving child entertainers in furry mascot costumes are a constant terror.
Primary colours also seem to be associated with family fun. You just have to look at the headache inducing décor of the Legoland Windsor Castle Hotel and the CBeebies Land Hotel Alton Towers Resort and wonder why it’s necessary: aren’t the rides enough?
4. Inedible food
Kids’ menus are another bugbear. I can guarantee you that on all but the most inventive of these there will be the obligatory burger and chips, chicken goujons, and dull pasta followed by a choice of ice cream or chocolate brownie. Why can’t children just have what parents have in a smaller size?
In all of these cases, it feels to me like the operator has mixed up “family friendly” with “ludicrously child-centric”.
When did we lose touch with just hanging out with our children on holiday?
What’s wrong with spending days on the beach, chucking a Frisbee around and going on family walks, stopping for pub lunch along the way?
But should we blame the travel industry for catering to the lowest common denominator? Perhaps we should question why we, as parents, are spending our disposable income on this commoditised version of the childhood holiday.
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Most of the time, kids just want to discover things for themselves. Are we getting in their way by ordering up packages in which everything is done for us, in which we abdicate our role as family leader?
Cressida Cowell, the creator of the How To Train your Dragon books, credits her childhood holidays to a remote Scottish island where all she could do was mess about in boats, walk, read, draw and talk to her family members, for firing her early imagination so that she conjured up a world where dragons exist. What if Cowell had she been shipped off to the highly scripted Disneyland each summer?
Holidays should be a time for kids to relax, to escape from the pressures of school. Everyone has read the studies proving that boredom is good for children, and those suggesting that children don’t necessarily benefit from homework .
Why, then, do parents think it’s acceptable to enroll their kids on a full schedule of events as part of their holiday? Is the pressure to make our children succeed in an overly competitive world seeping into our holiday time?
A few properties that really do deliver for families
For my family, Martinhal Sagres in the Algarve is the gold standard of a style of true family-friendliness that is worth its high price, as it keeps style, authenticity and genuine fun high on the agenda.
Stay in a villa with two separate bedrooms and a kitchen to independently rustle up snacks and lunches, though there’s also a lovely beachside restaurant where you can relax with a glass of wine while watching your little ones bounce on trampolines or play in the sand below. There are kids’ clubs and sports camps, but they don’t dominate the resort.
Innovative hotels are realising it’s all about experiences for children and adults. The new Hard Rock Hotel Tenerife is an example of a hybrid adult-meets-family hotel, with a more realistic price tag.
But our all-time family favourite is the Dandelion Hideaway glampsite on a goat farm in Leicestershire.
Boho chic interiors with comfy sofas, Agas, showers and four-poster beds keep mum and dad happy. Our kids, aged 13 & 10, got to feed chickens, collect eggs, milk goats, groom ponies, build fires and go a bit feral in the woods. Perhaps most important, we had the luxury of being able to relax enough to let the children get bored enough to start making up their own fun. And isn’t that was family-friendly holiday memories are made of?
This article was written by Jane Anderson from The Telegraph and was legally licensed through the NewsCredpublisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.
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