If you love spending time with your family, it’s only natural to want to experience something new together, get away from the grind of your daily lives, and spend some quality time with each other while on vacation. However, if you thought planning a vacation with just your immediate family was hard, try throwing in multiple other families from multiple different generations. But with the right attitude and some smart planning, you can plan and enjoy a great family vacation for each person in your family.
To help you see how this can be done, here are three tips for taking a successful multi-generational family vacation.
Keep Everyone All Together
The point of being on a vacation with your family is to spend time together. But with large groups and multi-generational families, it can sometimes feel easier to just give everyone their own space. However, this can often lead to people feeling like they’re on different vacations at the same destination.
To avoid this, you should try to keep everyone together as far as lodging goes. Ideally, Steve Larese, a contributor to the Travel Channel, suggests renting a home that you can all stay in. If you can find a home large enough, each family could still have their own space while also sharing common spaces and maximizing the time you have to spend together.
Make Sure Everyone Is Comfortable
If your family is already very close, then you’ll likely know what each person will be comfortable with and what they won’t be. But if you don’t get to spend time with your multi-generational family very often, be it because there are custody issues or distance coming into play, you may need to more expliciting ask people what they’re comfortable with.
By having a conversation about what people are comfortable with prior to planning too much of your trip, you’ll be able to know what mobility issues to consider, what destinations might be out of the question, what activities will be a good idea, and so much more.
Put The Bulk Of The Planning On One Person
Once everyone has settled on where to go and where you’ll stay once you’re there, you’ll then want to start planning your days. Often, if nothing gets planned, nothing will happen. And while this can be fun, some people want a little more excitement on their vacations.
To help with this part, Shivani Vora, a contributor to Forbes.com, suggests that you have just one person plan the bulk of the activities for the days you’ll be on vacation. This way, you won’t have to go through committee for everything and can have some unexpected surprise for everyone to enjoy together.
If you’re going to be taking a multi-generational family trip soon, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you make this vacation a success.
