hotel or "villa" with baby?

ok, we really, really need a break after the exhausting visit-the-family trip in UK earlier this month.


i am looking at a beach resort trip. but now that our little one is 6 months, he is eating solids. i really want to avoid jar food as much as possible. ok maybe 1 out of 3 meals for a few days is fine but most of the time i want him to eat his usual steamed vegetables.


so wondering if it's useful to go for those villa type accomodation with kitchen or will just the usual room do (and hope that the hotel kitchen will be generous enough to help us steam up the vegetables). or do i have to bring my electric steamer along and feed him more uncooked stuff like bananas and avocados?


parents, please share your travel experience and any baby-friendly destinations. thanks!

This is our experience from Bali.


Hotels and Villas

With advance notice - both were able to accomodate our requests. Including a microwave in the room to use our microwave steraliser bags, and keeping our homemade baby food in the hotel freezer. We were very impressed with the service. The hotel even gave us small size J&J items in the baby cot, and a stuffed toy for baby.


Changing Area

We used a hotel towel, and put our changing mat on top and had a nice are to change baby.


Bath

Baby had fun in the huge bath tub with daddy.


Baby Car Seats

In Bali, the cars, even from 5 star hotel, did not always have seat belts in the back - so had to wedge the car seat behind the driver seat :( The saving grace is that the fastest speed is 30kph.


Travel Sleep Cot

The samsonite baby travel cot was superb with the mosquito net - we put it inside the cots the hotel and villa gave us - baby just thought it was home! (we use it here too)

If baby is too big for that, I would just use the hotel cot with blankets and sheets from home.


Hotel - Pros

a 'compound' with restaurants, beach, etc... all right there. Including baby sitting services if needed and a varied room service.

Hotel - Cons

More expensive meals and room service

less likely to leave the compound area with a baby

Family in one room - harder to sleep through for everyone


Villa - Pros

can get 2 bedrooms

more privacy - private garden and pool to play

excellent personalised service - easy to use villa kitchen, staff willing to get us anything we needed, fast service

Villas - Cons

Fewer facilities and services


I think it is really important to check in advance what is available - baby cot, microwave, fridge, freezer, etc...


Steaming food

you can do this in a microwave - bit of water on a plate/bowl with the food

Uncooked food - mango, papaya, banana, avocado - all make it easy

Steralising - microwave steralise bags or milton steralise tablets

Washing up liquid - we forgot this and used shampoo - next time we will remember!

Nappies - we use cloth at home, but travel with disposable, we bring all we need for the trip.


We prepared and froze food before we went - and brought it with us in a freezer bag. We added dry ice in it on the plane and it worked great.

We also brought 2 jars of food for emergency, but didn't use them.


Relaxing about the schedule - try to feed at the right times, but be relaxed about restricting YOUR holiday. We went out for dinner and brought baby in car seat... he slept, we ate. We spent one morning about 5 hours on the beach in the shade of a 'bale' in the breeze, had nap time and meals and changed nappies there! In the mornings, husband would take baby out for an early morning walk so I could get some extra sleep :)

I think it is also important to lower your 'activity' expectations and just plan on relaxing. You can plan spa and golf days, but just remembering you need to take turns! We really enjoyed the family time and found it much more relaxing than expected.

Allamanda in Phuket has a great set up with two bedroom apartments - we always have a great holiday there.

I absolutely agree with @@.

We went there to Allamanda n Phukert last year when my boy was 7 months old and we had a superb time. It belongs to the group of 4 hotels (including Sheraton and Banyan Tree side by side of each other. We took the complimentary boat trips and travelled to the restaurants and swimming pools of the various hotels and had a great time. Don't spend the money to stay in Banyan Tree, as Allanmanda is the cheapest and has the best baby pool out of the four.

Like @@, we hired the 2-bedroom apartment with a huge living, ensuite bathrooms in each bedroom and a basic kitchen. It only cost around HKD1200 per apartemnt per night.We took our helper along and she managed to cook simple meals with meshed vegetables and pasta etc. for my boy (his main diet was still the milk).

We hired a driver locally and he also acted as a guide to take us around in his own private car (he paid for his own petrol). He only charged us around HKD250 per day. However he can only speak Thai & Chinese (Potunghua mainly and a some Cantonese), with minimum English. He was so nice that we paid him extra HK50 tips per day. He took us to the big supermartkets in the huge shopping malls to buy fresh fruits & vegetables, which were so nice and cheap. There are very nice Japanese restaurants in the malls as well, very fresh food at about 1/5 costs only when compared to HK, amazing.

If you decide to go to Allamanda, don't use the transfer service to travel from the airport to the hotel as it's not complimentary. It costs USD 20 per head (there were 4 of us, thus USD80). You can easily find taxis waiting outside the airport. We only spent HKD200 (USD25) for 4 of us to get there comfortably in a taxi.

You've gotten nicely helpful feedback. I'm a big fan of villas when we travel, or we get two adjoining rooms. Either way, we take along our monitor and make sure we've figured out which adaptors we need.


Having a kitchen and a proper 'fridge is great. Hotel food always seems to take FOREVER to come and is never as appealing as what they're used to from home. But at 6 mo, well, you can probably manage to stem starvation with lots and lots of baby rice, bananas and yogurt :-)


You really can't cram into one room though, I don't think anyway. Unless you and your husband are happy to keep the same sleep schedule your baby does, or your baby is much better at sleeping in a stimulating environment than ours ever was.


Have fun :-)

Iagree with 'my thoughts'. We tend to do the hotel thing for short stays, but once we go for a week or more, villas win every time. Our hotel rooms look like a bomb site once we have been there for a couple of hours (at least in villas, we can spread our debris).


I love having a proper kitchen. If the place comes with staff, so much the better, but the space is luxury enough. I hate telling the children to keep the noise level down every 2 minutes when we are in a hotel. It is their holiday too, and I just feel that they have more fun in a villa. The ideal is to travel with another family of similar age and split the cost, provide playmates for the children (and adults, I guess). It is so much more relaxing to have dinner while the children are asleep in the next room, or whatever. It is often cheaper to have a chef come in and cook for you than to head to a restaurant. You can also take turns babysitting, if the parents want a night out.