Why I Switched From Home Rentals to Resorts and Hotels with My Family

When I started traveling with family we would always choose home rentals to stay at. We loved the idea of staying in one place altogether with a shared kitchen and gathering space but still having our own rooms. The bonus was that a lot of times it was a cheaper option from a resort. As I got older and now have my own children, my view on home rentals has actually changed. Yes it was nice to have a separate room to put my infant or toddler in for a nap or earlier bedtime. It was also nice to always have laundry for all of the kid accidents that would occur daily or maybe I should say hourly. It seemed to workout ok but I always walked away from the vacation feeling like something was missing, like it just wasn't quite the vacation I thought it would be.

Then one year we decided to splurge on a resort and chose Aulani, a Disney Resort and Spa. To say this was life changing might actually be an understatement. It made me realize what was always missing from our family vacations. There were 2 things I realized that a resort can do for you: service and location. Things like pool towel service, daily room cleaning service, restaurants and snacks available on site and gigantic pool areas that no kid can actually get bored of were unbeatable at a resort. And then there was location! Being able to roll out of bed, throw the kids swimsuits on and walk right out to the pools and beach was a game changer.

A few years prior to staying at Aulani, we had visited the Big Island with my sister, brother in law and their daughter as well as my mom and dad. It was a nice trip but I vowed to never do it that way again. We staying in a very nice VRBO that had everything you could think of but was driving distance from the beach. When you have a 18 month old who is still napping and sometimes just gets cranky, packing everything up in the car in the morning, driving down to the beach and then realizing 1 hour into this trek you have to go back home for rest time and then reloading the car was not my idea of a vacation. In fact, it become somewhat miserable by the end. This has actually become my #1 aspect I look at when booking a vacation; is it right by the activity that I want to do? If the answer is no, then it is a hard pass. It is so worth it to me to pay the extra money for a resort right on the beach or at the bottom the ski hill or right next to the amusement park. Nothing for my family will beat being able to walk to and from the attraction we what to see or activity we want to do and even better yet, to have it on property.

We also began to realize that each immediate family within our multigenerational family did a whole lot better with their own space. We started booking separate rooms for each family but requesting to be near each other so that we could be close to each other without being on top of each other. What a difference this made with our family vacations. In the case with our Aulani stay my sister and I with our 2 children each chose 1 bedroom villas and our parents had a studio that connected to my sister's room. We each had a full kitchen in our villas as well as laundry in the unit. This is the absolute best set up for a multigenerational family vacation. I now spend time seeking out resorts with this similar set up and it always makes for an amazing trip. It will always be worth spending the extra money to have the service and location that a resort or hotel can offer best.