6 essential tips for finding the best family friendly vacation rentals

For many reasons, vacation rentals can just make more sense for families. We really didn’t try Airbnb and other short term rental platforms until we had little ones, but once we gave it a shot, it just made so much more sense for what we need out of a space. If you’re wondering how to find family friendly vacation rental spots that will work for your family, you’re in the right place.

At every stage of a family’s life, vacation rentals have their unique benefits over a hotel.

When our kids were infants, we needed a kitchen to warm bottles and space to walk back and forth to rock them to sleep at night without kicking the edge of a hotel bed and tripping over suitcases.

When our kids were toddlers, we needed for them to be able to run around or make noise without disturbing other guests.

Now that our kids are a bit older, we all just need our space. It’s nice to be able to put them to bed and be able to still talk or watch TV without disturbing them. And let’s be totally honest — it’s also nice to have more than one bathroom.

Create your list of must-haves

This is extremely important. Without this there are two things that can happen:

1. Analysis paralysis. Without a great list to refer to, the overwhelm with all of the options out there can be way too much. Deciding between two places (or five!) without the right criteria can be brutal.
2. Getting sucked in by amenities that you don’t need. You need to think about what your non-negotiables are to avoid getting wooed by things that just won’t matter to your family. For example, a hot tub is nice but it won’t move the needle for our family as far as whether or not we have a killer vacation. Therefore, a hot tub doesn’t make our list. I won’t specifically look for places without one, but I’m not willing to pay a premium for one if I know we won’t use it.

So what’s on our list of must haves? We need to have the entire place to ourselves. It can be a condo, townhome, or single family detached home, but a shared space is just not of interest to us. We also need enough beds for everyone. That doesn’t mean our kids can’t share, but we never go into a vacation planning on using a sleeping bag or air mattress to supplement the beds that are offered. They just take up valuable space and are more to travel with. And to be honest, introducing too many new variables that our kids aren’t used to is usually a recipe for disaster as far as sleep schedules go. Our kids sleep in their own beds at home and we try to replicate that in our travels to minimize the number of changes that they need to adjust to.

We also usually look for a place with a great kitchen. This is pretty dependent on the trip. Sometimes you just know you’re going to spend every meal out at restaurants, but more often than not we like a couple of early nights in where we cook and chill out in our pajamas. A kitchen that can handle a full meal as well as breakfast necessities is important to us.

Lastly, we love to have an outdoor space. Whether it be a firepit area for s’mores or a patio where the adults can have a glass of wine after the kids are off to bed, a vacation without ample outdoor space just doesn’t feel quite as relaxing to us.

Booking a safe vacation rental for your family

Although you still need to think about safety even at a hotel, vacation rentals are all different so you may need to evaluate each property differently and a bit more thoroughly than you may when staying at a hotel.

Safety may not be the most glamorous thing to think about when planning a vacation, but it is extremely important (if not more important) to think about safety measures when you are outside of your normal environment than it is when you’re at home.

• Pool Safety

For example, many families book vacation rentals with pools. What a fun escape it is to have a pool all to yourself especially in a warm or tropical climate. But unfortunately it can be easy to forget about what safety features your family may need near a pool especially when you aren’t around them regularly. Does the pool have a fence or safety gate? If not, are the doors leading out to the pool area childproof?

• Carbon monoxide detectors

Another safety feature to think about is carbon monoxide detectors. They are not required by law in many states but should be considered as standard as smoke detectors in homes. Some booking sites like Airbnb allow you to filter only on stays that have this feature. For other platforms that do not have this filter, it may be worth reaching out to the host ahead of time to ask if there are carbon monoxide detectors on property. If all of this sounds a bit dramatic, consider what happened to Anna Faris and her family a few years ago over Thanksgiving at a rental property. Thank goodness no one was seriously hurt, but the outcome could have been much worse.

They also sell portable carbon monoxide detectors for travel which may be a good option depending on your travel plans. This affordable gadget could be a great investment to take along on your travels, ensuring your safety from carbon monoxide no matter where you choose to stay.

Know what to expect out of the cancellation policy

Traveling with kids can be unpredictable. You’re always only one broken bone or fever away from needing to change your plans.

We will be forever reminded of this fact when we think about the time our daughter fell ill the night before a trip that we had planned to Martha’s Vineyard. Luckily since this was a road trip, no flights were at risk but a ticket for our car to go over on the ferry early the next morning certainly was. During peak travel times, those ferry tickets can be really hard to come by! A day later, with a lot of luck (and somehow a miraculous recovery), we were able to board another ferry and only lost a day off of our trip. Now, we strongly consider travel insurance to avoid losing a lot of money in situations like these.

Airbnb, VRBO, and Booking.com all have different cancellation policies and then within each of those platforms, there are different options you can choose, so be sure to pick the one that best suits your risk tolerance. If you still need extra protection, travel insurance or booking with a credit card that offers certain travel protections may be something to consider.

Don’t compromise on style — if that’s important to you

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that finding a family friendly vacation rental doesn’t mean compromising on style. A family vacation rental doesn’t mean some sterile, boring property in the suburbs. There are great spots that you can find downtown, uptown, by the beach — wherever you want to be. Traveling with kids doesn’t mean that you need to find some place with bumpers everywhere and be on your guard the whole time about something getting broken.

We have stayed in some super high style spots that are extremely welcoming to kids — with bunk beds, playrooms, treehouses, etc. Just because something looks fancy doesn’t mean that it’s not safe for kids or that your kids will immediately destroy it.

Some booking platforms such as Kid and Coe, specifically cater to customers that are interested in this option. They curate extremely high end, high style rental homes that are kid friendly to boot. The list of criteria that you can filter for even includes several key baby items like monitors, high chairs, and cribs.

Look closely at the listing photos

Ok. I’ll admit that this seems really obvious. Everyone pours through the listing photos when booking an Airbnb, probably multiple times. But what are you really looking for?

First, double check the sleeping situation. What’s the setup of the rooms? Will it work for your family? Will the kids and adults be on different floors? Is that preferred? A deal breaker?

Next, check for any weird safety things not covered in the section above. Is there a patio or other exterior door off the room that you intend for the kids to be in? Does that worry you? Are there stairs that may present a challenge for little ones?

Finally, what’s the clutter situation? No one wants to spend the first hour of their vacation putting breakables out of the reach of little ones. If the pictures show a space that is minimal, with few knick-knacks, then you’re likely in the clear. More specifically, I keep an eye out for vases, lamps, and collectibles.

Most moms would be able to clear these items quickly, but we also have an supreme inability to leave a space without things being put back just so. So the idea of spending time putting these items away at the beginning of a trip only to find their original homes again at the end of the trip does not sound like a fun time to me.

Take notes

Our final word of advice is to just take notes on what works and doesn’t work every time you travel. Not every booking will be a homerun. Sometimes it’s not your fault. Listings may be vague. Or perhaps you didn’t have an item categorized as a non-negotiable in your head but it turns out that it is. Maybe as your family grows, your needs change. Whatever it is, take notes about what worked and what didn’t work and incorporate those thoughts the next time you book. You’ll find that over time, you’re finding killer family vacation rentals with less and less effort each time.

Have you found a particularly great family friendly rental? Share it! Leave a comment with the link and tell us why it was awesome.

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