How to Survive a Multi-Family Vacation
Traveling with friends or family? Check out these tips on how to survive a multi-family vacation.
Amanda Thomas
Listen
How to Survive a Multi-Family Vacation
My sisters and I recently planned a trip with our families to celebrate our parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Our families live all over the country and it’s not often we are all able to get together, so having a big family vacation seemed like a great way to celebrate with our parents. The challenge was putting together a vacation that 4 separate families, ages ranging from 16-72, would enjoy. We tend to all get along fairly well, and most things went smoothly for us, but there were a few lessons we learned on the trip.
To help you learn from our successes and mistakes, today’s episode is focused on logistical tips to help you survive a multi-family vacation. I say these are logistical tips because I am going to assume that you like and get along with any other families you choose to vacation with. Traveling can be stressful, so hopefully you are choosing to do it with people you enjoy spending time with.
Tip #1 – How to Decide on a Location
Before our trip started, we had our first squabbles. Determining a location where everyone wants to go, plus has enough time to get to, and is within budget was a challenge. To help us decide, we started with the one essential thing we wanted: to be near water. We originally thought we wanted to be near an ocean, but California was out of budget, Florida would be too humid, and each of the other places along the coast were rejected by one or more people in our group. We started looking in land, and settled on the Great Lakes area, specifically Sandusky, Ohio. This area had affordable vacation rental homes, lots of sight-seeing and outdoor activities, as well as Cedar Point Amusement Park. It seemed like a great fit for our family with such a wide range in age.
When you are planning your multi-family vacation, talk with the families about the must haves of the trip. Also discuss budgets and the amount of time everyone is able to spend at the location. Once you have these basics, start doing some initial research into accommodations in a few areas. Are there any accommodations available during the time you want to travel? Can you afford the rates they have advertised? Based off the initial searches for accommodations, hopefully one or two destinations will stand out and be easily agreed upon.
Tip #2 – Book Enough Space
We booked a vacation rental home in Sandusky that looked great, but we knew it was going to be a little tight on space. We had 3 couples, a single adult, and 3 teenagers. When we booked the house, it had 3 bedrooms, and 3 sofa beds. When we showed up though, we found that the owners had added 2 additional bedrooms in the basement and created 2 built-in beds in the spaces under the roof. We could have made it work with the 3 bedrooms and 3 couches, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that we were able to enjoy the vacation much more because everyone had their own space.
If you are staying anywhere longer than a couple nights, make sure that everyone has a designated space not only to sleep, but also where they can retreat when they need alone time, and where they won’t be kept awake by the night owls and early birds.
Also, make sure you have at least one bathroom per every 4 people. Having more than 4 people share one bathroom is doable, but it will almost certainly require creating a schedule to make sure each person has an opportunity to get ready in privacy.
Tip #3 – Plan Half of Your Meals
As a person who loves to plan, I wanted to plan out every meal that our family would eat together. I thought it would be easier to get everything planned, then go shopping one time and be set for the week. What we discovered was that we ended up grabbing food while we were out exploring more often than we expected. Luckily we were able to send the extra food home with one of my sisters who lived only a couple hours away from our vacation spot, but this is something that happens frequently with vacation rentals. When my company cleans vacation rentals, we often find lots of uneaten food. Save money by purchasing only one or two days of food at a time, not an entire week’s worth of food.
Likewise, if you are planning on eating out for most of your meals, don’t plan every meal in advance. Inevitably, plans are going to change at some point, and having flexibility for people to split up and eat in smaller groups is going to be appreciated.
Tip #4 – One Cook in the Kitchen
While we are talking about food, let’s talk about the cooking process, which will only apply if you are renting a vacation rental home. My family is full of helpful people. On the first day we were all together, one of us started cooking, and 3 more people jumped into the kitchen to help. What ensued was a disaster because there were literally too many cooks in the kitchen. For each meal, designate one person to do the actual cooking. Then, the only people allowed in the kitchen are ones that the cook specifically asks to help for certain tasks. If there is an outdoor grill, a 2nd cook can do the grilling while the 1st cook is doing all the stovetop work. No matter how helpful your group is, having too many people in the kitchen is a recipe for disaster.
Tip #5 – Give Everyone a Job
Just because there’s not enough room for everyone to help cook the dinner doesn’t mean there aren’t important ways for them to help. For each meal, divide up the tasks that need to get done after the meals. Tasks that can be divvied up are loading the dishwasher, wiping down all the surfaces, taking out the trash, and unloading the dishwasher.
If you are staying in hotels, the same principle can apply. Assign one person each day to pack the snacks for the day’s outings, another to determine the best route to follow to get to your destination, and another to clean out the cars at the end of the day. By giving each person in your group a specific task, and rotating the tasks among everyone, each person will be chipping in to make things run smoothly.
Tip #6 – Say THANK YOU
One morning, I had spent about 45 minutes cooking breakfast for my family, only to have one of our family members come in to the kitchen and start talking about how the eggs weren’t very yellow, and I must have only used egg whites. Let me tell you, that was NOT what I wanted to hear after cooking breakfast for 10 people. A simple, “Thank you,” was all I wanted to make my efforts feel worthwhile.
This is a quick and easy tip, but it may be the most important one to keep the peace in your group. Coaching and reminding all the people in your group, from the littles to the bigs, to say thank you when someone else does a job will help everyone feel appreciated and keep resentment at bay. So, make sure everyone in your group is making a conscious effort to thank the person who made their meal, coordinated an outing, drove a carload of people to a destination, or cleaned up after the group. It will go a long way. Trust me.
Tip #7 – Plan, But Be Flexible
When coordinating activities for your large group, it’s easy to get caught up in the idea of a group vacation and think that every person needs to participate in every activity. The problem is that not everyone in your group will want to do the same things, and some people will need more down-time than others. What we discovered was that by scheduling large group activities every other day, we had flexibility on the opposite days to give each person the opportunity choose their own activities.
The way this looked for us was:
· Sunday – Exploring a state park, light house, and small lake front town that were about 45 minutes from where we were staying
· Tuesday – Taking a ferry to visit 2 islands in Lake Erie
· Thursday – Going to Cedar Point Amusement Park
These were all very time intensive, and energy intensive, so we left the opposite days fairly open. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we split into smaller groups to do half-day activities like exploring local museums, going go-cart racing, exploring local beaches, going for walks, or just playing games around the house. This also gave the introverts in our group an opportunity to stay home by themselves and recharge their batteries, which ensured there weren’t any meltdowns from anyone in our group.
All in all, our multi-family vacation ended up being a great experience for us all. We were able to enjoy some great family time together, while exploring a part of the country none of us had seen before. I hope these tips were helpful for you, and would love to hear if you have any additional tips from your multi-family vacations. Leave them in the comment section below, or on my Facebook page.
Until next time, I’m the Domestic CEO, helping you love your home.