Tag Archives: Family Travel

What Makes Ciao Bambino A Valuable Resource For Traveling Families

Today’s guest post is from Amie O’Shaughnessy, the editor of Ciao Bambino, a family travel planning website that I regularly recommend to family and friends looking for help finding accommodation which has been rated and reviewed by other parents.

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When I first started Ciao Bambino in 2004, there were a surprisingly few number of online resources providing family travel information.

The explosion of blogging has dramatically changed the travel information landscape. Now, experienced travelers have an effective technology platform to share stories, tips and advice on how they make travel with kids fun and easy. Every blog is focused on a different and important aspect of family travel.

Most parents agree that where you stay is an essential part of any successful family vacation. This has always been Ciao Bambino’s area of expertise and focus. Many hotels say they welcome kids, but lip service is very different than room configurations that support families and a friendly atmosphere. We started screening hotels in the most popular family tourist destinations in Europe, and have now expanded our coverage to North and Central America (the blog covers Asia, stay tuned for related hotels).

Thank you Michelle for inviting me to share why Ciao Bambino is a valuable travel planning resource for families! Grab a cup of coffee, there is much to say. Just kidding, there is quite a bit to say, but I’ll be brief.

Experience
When I look back at what I thought I knew when I founded Ciao Bambino I laugh. Yes, I lived out a suitcase for a year traveling around the world pre-kids, but we all know that this perspective is practically useless once you have a family.

Fortunately, I love my job and we’ve been diligent about frequent travel inside and outside the country with our son. We have one child so my perspective is limited, however, I’m so lucky to work with a great team including Nancy Solomon who has traveled extensively with her four children under 10.

Our direct experience is important, but what makes our perspective unique is that we’ve helped literally a few hundred families develop detailed vacation itineraries. Through running the Ciao Bambino trip planning service, I learned what parents want and need in accommodations when traveling with kids of all ages.

Who cares?
This matters because I took the feedback from our planning service clients and developed our hotel review methodology. We take the time to contact every hotel featured on Ciao Bambino. This allows us to thorough vet every property featured on the website and showcase the nitty-gritty details. We work on standard industry commission rates across our portfolio; there are no hidden agendas to push one property over another.

Details, details
Every Ciao Bambino review is comprehensive. Written by and for parents, we feature those tidbits that are otherwise in the fine print or not available at all without picking up the phone. Favorites for me include starting babysitting rates and the driving distance to medical facilities for more remote properties. We note the starting age requirement for every kids’ club, and if there is an associated fee to use it. Every property has unique pros and cons and our reviews clearly communicate what they are for families.

We also take the time to understand the starting rate based on the number of people traveling. This is the only price data point that is relevant with kids; even the hotels catering to families fail to list pricing in this way on their websites.

We cover all age groups
Babies, toddlers, school age, and teens – all of these stages have very different needs and requirements. What makes a property great for a toddler may not make it great for a teenager. We provide age-appropriate ratings for every property featured.

Reliability
User-generated content is more popular that ever now. It’s a great way to efficiently grow the amount of information on a website, however, the downside is quality. The vast majority of websites that rely solely on user-generated content have a quality challenge. The information presented may or may not be valuable and when you are a parent looking for consistent details, it’s impossible to compare two properties using reviews that do not provide an apples-to-apples comparison.

All of our reviews are template-driven, so the details presented are consistent and our readers can easily compare and contrast properties.

Time
Time is scarce for parents and we need a very efficient way to plan travel and make decisions. Our reviews use bullets to ensure details are easy to read and digest. My goal is that Ciao Bambino users are able to figure out the high level, relevant pros and cons for a property within five minutes or less. Full narratives about a property are great to evaluate your short list, but who has time to read through all that text just to narrow down a list of good options?

Quality
Even the best laid-out reviews are useless if the property reviewed is not appealing. We try to find independent, unique hotels that enhance the travel experience. This is more difficult to do in the US vs. Europe since many of the family-friendly options are chains, but we still manage to uncover the gems.

All requests made through the Ciao Bambino website go directly to the hotel for the latest pricing and information. We follow up with each and every client to ensure every part of a request has been handled. Plus, we give great free gifts for bookings.

Here’s the bad news. All the painstaking effort it takes to feature every property on Ciao Bambino means that our portfolio has been slow to develop. If you don’t see something that fits your needs – please check back – we’re working hard to review the best price and amenity options for families in destinations around the world.

Amie O’Shaughnessy is the Editor of Ciao Bambino, a family travel resource providing tips and advice, as well as comprehensive reviews of the best hotels and resorts for kids of all ages.

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Handheld Video Games, Kids And Travel

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My kids travel with their Nintendos
I’m not particularly proud of this fact, but that’s because I have a love-hate relationship with video games in general. I love the way they keep my children entertained – sometimes for hours at a time – but I can’t stand the way they keep my children occupied to the exclusion of everything else that’s going on around them.

That said, there is no doubt that in today’s world of over-booked flights, flight delays and other such traveling silliness, I have personally experienced how a good Nintendo game can be a parental life-saver. We were flying from Seattle to Puerto Vallarta via Phoenix. Our two-hour layover became four, then six hours. We boarded and de-planed twice. We shuffled on and off the plane through dinner time and the kid’s normal bed time. They were completely unfazed. CAM, at 10, had a new game for his Nintendo DS. BigB, at six was utterly fascinated watching his big brother play. We just lugged our baggage (carry-on only) on and off the plane and let them at it.

Managing video game use while traveling

The uneasy bargain that I have with my children with respect to their beloved Nintendos and my love of immersing them in new cultures and new places is that I try to enforce a “video games are for playing while we’re in transit” rule. There are subtle nuances to this rule: I’d prefer if they only used their Nintendos on the flights to and from our destination; they’d prefer if they could use them every time they sit in a plane, train or automobile. You can imagine the ensuing negotiations. But, even though CAM once exclaimed “Of all the moms in the world, why did I get stuck with you?” specifically because this particular rule, it does work most of the time.

I have been known to hide the Nintendos once we arrive at our destination. Ssh, don’t tell my kids. They always magically reappear when we’re about to board our return flight. And in the time in between, I pay for my choice by being soundly beaten in Scrabble and Set by CAM but also having many raucous games of Uno or Rat-A-Tat-Cat with both of the boys.

Managing video game accessories while traveling

The games are tiny, the power cords have an annoying habit of being left behind in our rented accommodation and the devices themselves are frequently rescued from pockets just in the nick of time – barely escaping the over-sized washing machines of laudromats all over Europe. (I have discovered that Nintendo games can survive the washer and the dryer and still function quite well).

We’ve lost way too many games while traveling. To me, this is one of those parental trade-offs which we make in the hope of teaching life lessons: if my children are responsible for their own games the benefit is that they will learn to look after their own games. The risk, of course, is losing games and the expense of replacing those games. Unless there’s really special circumstances, if CAM or BigB lose a game when we’re on the road, they chose whether or not they want to replace it out of their own savings or pocket-money. No discussion. So far, consternation and lamentations aside, that’s also worked out pretty well.

I find that game cases such as the CaseLogic Nintendo DS Game Case are a great tool to help your child keep track of his games, his DS and all the other DS paraphernalia while traveling.

What do you think?
Do you have a rant or rave about handheld video games for kids in general? Have you allowed your children to use them at home or while traveling? Do you perhaps allow them for traveling but not at home? And if so, how do you get your child to go along with that??

Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts, opinions and ideas.

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Free Range Kids On The Road

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I read Lenore Skenazy’s blog Free Range Kids for the first time last month. Seriously, I cannot believe that I missed last year’s media furore when she let her then 9 year old son ride the New York subway home alone – but then again, I’m a working mom and I admit, there are days (weeks even) when don’t have time to either read the newspaper or listen to NPR.

At any rate, when I found Skenazy’s blog , I was excited. I mean truly, jumping-up-and-down excited. I’ve lived my parenting life in the U.S. where the shadow of being an outsider butts into my interactions with the moms of my children’s friends all too frequently. It’s not something that keeps me awake at night, but it’s an annoyance I struggle with since, like any mom, I appreciate that my kids want to fit in and my “no, I don’t like peanut butter and jelly” oddities are a distraction they’d rather not have to deal with and I’d rather not saddle upon them. On Free Range Kids I’ve found a group of people who, at least on one parental dimension (i.e. freedom and independence in childhood), think as I do and act as I do.

I grew up in a small Irish town. I don’t remember ever locking the door or turning on a house alarm (in fact, we didn’t have one). I do know that I and my younger siblings walked everywhere and were pretty darn self-sufficient from a very early age. Such were the practicalities of my life. We didn’t have scheduled playdates instead our friends just dropped by. We were regularly told to “go outside and don’t come back until…” (at which point I would usually take a book and go read in the garden).

Growing up in Seattle, my children have had a very different experience and frankly I have failed miserably at managing their social calendar. It’s like meal planning. Really, I want someone to show up at my house daily with an expertly prepared repast. Instead, I avoid thinking about dinner until I have to and then I regret not having planned in advance. I have the best of intentions in terms of scheduling playdates for both of my children, but by the time I remember to call it’s too late and Johnny or Jane or Jim is already doing something else. The net result of this is that I have two pleasant, but not very socially adept children. They don’t even realize it.

However, when it comes to travel, I think my kids are better prepared than most of their peers. This may seem counter-intuitive. I mean, you might think that a parent would be more rather than less protective of a child when traveling. And it’s true, I was – with my first child. He’s challenging in many ways, but not when we travel. He’ll sit by me in an airport and bemoan the fact that he’s leaving Seattle again, but he’s never wandered – unlike my younger son. I’ve never been in such good shape as I was the year BigB (the younger guy) turned two. I chased him everywhere we went. He doesn’t run any more, but he does have a streak of independence a mile wide and the self-confidence to pick himself up and go follow his interests -wherever we are. He’s not yet NINE people!

BigB has disappeared out of sight multiple times: in big cities and small towns, in airports and shopping malls, in the U.S. and in random other countries we’ve visited. When he was two, as we walked down a Parisian street, he decided he was hungry and found himself a cafe – we found him pretty quickly. At four, he insisted on riding the (admittedly beginner) ski lift with his brother but without parents. At six, with much cajoling, my older son (the cautious one) proudly ordered his own glace (ice cream) in a French cafe – while we waited outside. At the same age, my younger son explored the shops around the town square in Albufeira, Portugal while his dad and I ate lunch. I’d be lying if I said that I was totally calm every time he disappeared into a store but each time he reappeared, he confidently waved to us and ran to the next set of trinkets without a care in the world.

When we were in Rome last year, rather than insist that my boys sit quietly in a restaurant while their Dad and I finished dinner, they ran off to explore the Piazza Del Parthenon. With lights and music and street hawkers on every corner they were in kid heaven. They came looking for us before we had even left the restaurant. As I walked through the square after dinner, a Bangladeshi street hawker stopped me an congratulated me on my son’s bargaining skills (who knew?).

This may sound like my parenting is a little too “hands-off”, negligent even. That would be an incorrect assumption. We’ve developed a strategy which we use when we’re exploring a new place. We always carry cell phones and require that our children know the numbers – thankfully we both have phones which we can bring with us outside the U.S. and we subscribe to AT&T’s plan which allows us to make calls at reduced rates while traveling. We agree on a meeting place or a place where Mom and Dad will wait while the children explore. We insist that they stick together – and then we hope that they don’t have a sibling quarrel and part ways. So far that hasn’t happened.

All children are individuals and some are born with a desire to explore. As Lenore Skenazy suggests, it is worse to constrain a child like that than to let him (safely) roam. My son craves more and greater independence every day. My parenting decision was to recognize where my children’s respective personalities sit along the spectrum of independence and to provide the individual support needed – and then to encourage each of them to spread his wings – in whatever form that takes – based on the relevant individual starting point.

And if you travel, the opportunities to do so are endless.

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What the Travel-Blogging-Moms Are Saying

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have baby will ski

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skiing-with-baby
How to take your baby skiing

Meet Jay, who runs one of the equipment rental stores in Whistler. I met Jay and his family when we stopped for lunch on Blackcomb Mt during our New Year trip to Whistler. It was difficult NOT to notice him as he threw off his ski jacket and I realized that he was carrying a baby in a Baby Bjorn. It was also obvious that he had skied with the baby in the front pack.

I’ve heard about people doing this, but I’ve never met anyone who has. Jay explained that yes, he was a pretty experienced skier. He also cautioned that the resort doesn’t sanction taking a baby skiing in a front pack. Still, to me, this is an example of how you can still do all the things you like to do – with an infant. As Jay said, “we don’t ski the same way, it takes us longer to get out on the mountain and we don’t ski the same terrain, but, for us, it was the only way we could keep skiing.”

And the baby? Five months old, happy as a clam strapped to his Dad’s chest with a healthy glow from all that fresh air.

Wander on over to DeliciousBaby for more Photo Friday fun.

I’ve also entered the contest on HomeAway to win a week at one of their fantastic selection of vacation rental properties. Check out my contest entry here, and if you like it, I appreciate your vote. Thanks!

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Whistler Trip Report Jan 2009

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CIMG0650

We hadn’t actually planned to go to Whistler for New Year, but the whacky pre-Christmas weather in Seattle meant that by January 30th we had spent most of the previous 10 days rattling around the house and everyone was suffering from cabin fever. WanderDad heroically took the boys sledding and we went for some walks in our neighborhood, but the weather was truly conspiring against even these feeble attempts at exercise. The precipitation seemed to be switching randomly between snow, sleet and rain causing us to get sopping wet on each expedition.

Just for kicks, late on January 30th, we had a look at deals and specials on the WhistlerBlackcomb website. Surprisingly, even with the recent economic woes, there didn’t seem to be any significant reducations available for accommodation (our biggest expense on a trip to Whistler). Interesting, but suspicious. I checked a few of the internet booking engines, but again, didn’t find anything which jumped out as a recession-worthy pricing. At this point, the WanderDad, his heart set on a few days of hardcore powder fun, dismissed my obvious ineptitude and took the driving seat. Going straight to Priceline.com he entered a ridiculously low bid price ($150) for a 4-star hotel room in Whistler Village – and it was accepted! For New Year’s Eve!!

It’s exciting to see how Whistler is pulling out all the stops for the 2010 Olympics, starting with the improvements to the Sea-to-Sky Highway (Hwy 99) from Vancouver. Our trip to Whistler took 4.5 hours door-to-door including 20 minutes at the U.S.-Canadian border. More passing lanes and better road surfaces on Hwy 99 are welcome improvements and definitely make the road safer to drive.

CIMG0646 Whistler Valley from the Peak2Peak Gondola

The Peak-to-Peak gondola is definitely an exciting addition to the resort. Before our trip, I was adamant that I would wait a few seasons before taking the 11minute ride between the Roundhouse Lodge (on Whistler Mt.) and the Rendevous (on Blackcomb Mt.). As we all know, when you travel with kids, you will do anything to keep them happy and so my terror of unsafe engineering, collapsing gondola towers and almost 2 miles of unsupported span was tossed aside and I marched into the super-sized gondola. We skied Whistler in the morning and Blackcomb in the afternoon and didn’t loose the hour it has taken in prior years to download from one mountain and upload to the other. I’ll just need to work on my worries before we visit again.

For various reasons, making the pre-season ski swaps and sales didn’t quite make my list this fall, so we found ourselves packing the car for our trip without any equipment for our boys. Without time to check out local retailers, we decided to rent at the resort ‘just this once’. So, here’s a quick summary of this year’s equipment rental pricing:
The resort offers rental packages which can be booked in advance with a 30% discount at Equipment Rentals. You can ignore this. The rates – with discount – are higher than rates for comparable packages at rental locations in Whistler village. We used Summit Sports paying $60 for a four-day skis/boots/poles package + a 10% discount since this outlet was in the hotel where we were staying. Affinity Sports has slightly better pricing ($50 for four-day rentals). For comparison, a weekly rental for the same package costs $30 at the Joe’s Sports store in Seattle. (Guess where I’ll be this coming weekend.)

When you ski with kids, it takes longer than you think it should to get out in the morning; they need take an unbelievable number of food and potty breaks; and if it’s too windy, too cold or just too something, you may end up coming down the mountain early. But on a good day, it’s so worth it. We committed to learning how to ski and teaching our children to ski ten years ago when we first visited Whistler – inspired by the many multi-generational family groups we saw out on the mountain together. Our investment is finally paying off. On this trip, we were definitely playing catch-up to our kids.

If you’re visiting the Whistler area soon, here’s our choices for ‘run of the day’ (chosen by BigB and CAM):
Day 1: Whistler Mt. Roundhouse to Creekside: Pony Trail to Franz’s – a long, long run to get your ski legs going.
Day 2: Blackcomb Mt: Wishbone to Zig Zag – fun, fun, fun. Some wide sweeping sections, some narrow steeps and a long curve around to the Excelerator chair.
Day 3: Blackcomb Mt: Dragon Alley (Kid’s Terrain Garden) to Connector. This is what makes Whistler such fun for families: kid-sized gladed tree runs – groomed, no less. Dragon Alley and it’s pair run Black Forest both let out onto Connector for a lazy swoop down to the Solar Coaster Express.

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FamilyTravelForum.com

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This is one of the websites recommended by Frommer’s. You need to become a member to access most of the content on this website. For me, that’s a distraction that I’d rather not have to deal with. Membership costs $3.95 (1 month) – $38 (1 year). The benefits of membership include: information for planning a trip; travel agent; deals; bulletin boards (www.familytravelboards.com); counselors; newsletter; discounts; open forum: tidbits/leaders from member articles & boards for non-members to view.

It may be that the owners of this website are changing their opinion on using membership to constrain access to their content: I found a beta site www.tinytravelers.net which seemed to include a lot of the same content, but without requiring paid membership.

In terms of the content , there are lots of articles on a wide variety of travel and family-travel related topics on this website which are organized into different categories within “Planning” and “Resources”. However, for example, the “Family Preferences/Ideas for … “,Â an option under “Planning” on the main page, seems at first as if it’s a useful tool for trip ideas suited to a specific age group. But, the page of “ideas” is long and unwieldy making it difficult to find what you’re looking for.

The Search box also seems useful at first. However, the search results include both Deals and Articles. The results are displayed as a long list without any organization – except that Deals are listed first.Â ThisÂ is a nuisance ifÂ the topic you’re searching on (e.g. Spain)Â returns many related Deals and/or Articles.Some of the articles on this website are written by travel writers who have never traveled with kids (Airplane Survival Kit); someÂ who have (“Daddy, When Are We Going Home?”); and some areÂ obviously sourced through services (Packing Tips).

For me, the authentic voice of an experienced wander-parent was much more interesting than either of the other two kinds of articles. While I was poking around this website, I noticed that my browser was blocking pop-ups constantly. if I didnâ€™t have a blocker, this would have really distracted from the usability of the website.

Â Next up: www.travelwithyourkids.com

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Family Travel Websites Reviewed

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I love to plan and organize family vacations, but in 2007 I was somewhat dissatisfied with some of the choices I had made for flights and accommodation. So, this year, I thought I would try something new:

Start early in the planning process.

Read guidebooks so that Iâ€™m better informed before I start booking the trip.

Check out family travel oriented websites (which Iâ€™ve never done before).

Since weâ€™re planning to travel (to Tuscany) in June 2008 and Iâ€™m already starting my research, I think I can check off #1.

I picked up copies of Lonely Planet – Tuscany and Frommerâ€™s – Tuscany and Umbria. Check for #2.

Most helpfully, in the introduction to the Frommerâ€™s book, family travel is covered in the section on â€œSpecial Needsâ€ travel. They have a list of websites which seem to be mentioned in all of their books under Tips for Families. So I diligently opened each of the referenced websites and was unpleasantly under-whelmed at the organization and content on these sites.

Frommerâ€™s recommends:

http://www.familytravelforum.com/

http://www.familytravelnetwork.com

http://www.travelwithyourkids.com/

http://www.thefamilytravelfiles.com/

Beth Whitman, knowing I was considering a family travel blog, forwarded the following websites to me:

http://www.familytravelguides.com/

http://www.sixintheworld.com/ –> this is one family’s story of their Round-The-World trip. Definitely worth checking out if you’re any way interested in adventuring off-the-beaten-path with your kids, but not really a site intended for use in planning or booking family travel.

In general, on each of these websites, once I found an article on a topic which interested me, the content itself was acceptable, sometimes using articles syndicated from well-known authors. However, each of these sites except www.travelwithyourkids.com was difficult to use. The content was not well organized, making it difficult to find information. I’ll continue in my next post with a summary review of each of these family travel-planning websites …

WanderMom

Inspiration for where to travel with children

Tag Archives: Family Travel

What Makes Ciao Bambino A Valuable Resource For Traveling Families

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Handheld Video Games, Kids And Travel

Managing video game use while traveling

Managing video game accessories while traveling

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Free Range Kids On The Road

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What the Travel-Blogging-Moms Are Saying

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have baby will ski

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Whistler Trip Report Jan 2009

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FamilyTravelForum.com

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Family Travel Websites Reviewed

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