Thinking About Traveling With Kids? Where To Start

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We Have Been Doing This Since They Were Two And Three

Our kids were two and three the first time we took them across an ocean. Not to a resort twenty minutes from an airport — to Europe, with time changes, train platforms, car seats, and a stroller that never once folded on the first try. Everyone told us to wait. We did not wait, and it remains one of the best decisions we have made as a family.

Since then we have done alpine summers in Austria, slow weeks in Italy, long drives through the Dolomites, and more airport mornings than I can count. I have learned what actually makes a trip work with small children, and — more usefully — what quietly ruins one. That experience is the reason clients hand me their family trips instead of a search bar.

What I tell every parent first: the trip does not have to be smaller because your kids are small. It has to be built differently.

Start With One Question

Before destinations, before flights, before anything — ask what kind of trip you actually want. One where your kids are tolerated, or one where the entire thing was designed with them in mind? That single distinction shapes every decision after it.

Family-Focused vs. Family-Friendly

These two phrases sound interchangeable. They are not, and the difference is the whole ballgame.

Family-friendly usually means children are allowed. There may be a kids menu, a crib on request, a small play corner near the lobby. The hotel is lovely — it simply was not built around your family. You spend the week adapting to someone else’s vision of a good time.

Family-focused means the property was imagined with families at the center. Rooms where parents and kids both sleep. Dining timed for small appetites and early hunger. Childcare that is the highlight of the trip rather than an afterthought. Staff who genuinely light up when a toddler walks in. When a hotel is family-focused, you stop managing the trip and start enjoying it.

Here is the practical test I use when vetting a property:

• Is childcare included and staffed by trained coaches, or is it a babysitter list at reception?

• Can a family of four sleep without one parent on a rollaway?

• Is there food available when kids are actually hungry — not only at 8pm?

• Is there somewhere for kids to burn energy when it rains?

• Do parents get real downtime, or only shifts?

A family-friendly hotel passes one or two of those. A family-focused hotel passes all five before you ask.

Why Austria Works So Well

If I had to choose one region for a first big family trip abroad, it would be Austria. The infrastructure does the heavy lifting: trains run on time, roads are immaculate, towns are walkable, and the culture simply expects children to be present. Nobody sighs when you walk into a restaurant with a four-year-old.

Then there is the landscape. Lakes you can swim in, cable cars that turn a hike into a ten-minute thrill, playgrounds at mountain summits, farms where kids feed animals before breakfast, and gondolas that make even a reluctant walker enthusiastic. Summer is green and mild; winter is storybook. Salzkammergut — where Hallstatt sits — is a UNESCO World Heritage region, and it looks exactly like the photos without a single filter.

Practically speaking, Austria also keeps drive times short. You can base in one hotel and reach lakes, mountains, and villages in under an hour, which matters enormously when a car nap is the only nap you are getting.

Why The Dolomites Belong On Your List

The Dolomites are Austria’s dramatic Italian cousin: jagged peaks, meadows, and mountain huts serving apple strudel at the top of an easy trail. What makes them so good for families is the scale of the reward relative to the effort — a short lift and a gentle path deliver a view that looks like the cover of a magazine.

Towns like Ortisei, Corvara, and Alta Badia are small enough for kids to lead the way, with car-free centers, gelato on every corner, and lifts running straight out of town. Add Italian hospitality, which treats children like small celebrities, and you have a region that flatters even a rough travel day.

Dachsteinkönig Familux Resort, In Detail

This is the hotel we cannot stop recommending, and the one that converts skeptics fastest. Dachsteinkönig sits in the Salzkammergut at the foot of the Dachstein massif, and it is part of Familux Resorts — the world’s first premium hotel group built exclusively for families. Not a luxury hotel that added a kids corner. A luxury hotel where families are the entire point.

What they actually offer:

• Childcare, seriously. At least 25 trained Kids Coaches, seven days a week, up to 13 hours a day, across baby, mini and teen clubs. Babies are welcome from 7 days old, and children are looked after through age 16.

• 2,000 m² of indoor play. Soft play, cinema and theatre, go-kart track, sports hall, children’s carousel, gaming rooms, billiards and table football, plus a virtual-reality climbing room for days the weather turns.

• A water slide park. A 100-metre tyre slide with surprise effects, plus three more slides including a penguin slide built for belly sliders, alongside the family pools.

• A 1,000 m² adult spa. Saunas, steam bath, a relaxation room with waterbeds, massages, Ayurveda and facials — the part parents forget is possible on a family holiday.

• Kids spa. Glacier soap foam baths and chocolate massages for the small ones, which is exactly as delightful as it sounds.

• Outdoor everything. Climbing wall, children’s vehicle course, adventure playground, giant trampolines, a 17-metre bouncy castle, sand playground and a summer animal enclosure.

• All-inclusive dining. Food available nearly around the clock, with proper gourmet cooking for adults and genuinely good food for kids — not a beige buffet in a side room.

• Suites and chalets. Separate sleeping areas, room to spread out, and private chalet options for multigenerational groups or two families traveling together.

Here is what that adds up to in real life. Our kids asked to go to the club every single day, and waved goodbye to their coaches with actual tears at checkout. We had spa mornings. We had a dinner where nobody cut anyone else’s food. We came home rested — a sentence I did not expect to write about a trip with young children.

A few planning notes: book early, because Familux properties sell out far in advance for summer and holiday weeks; ask about chalet availability if you are traveling with grandparents; and plan at least four nights, because the resort itself is a destination, not a base you sleep in between excursions.

Explore Dachsteinkönig Familux Resort

Other Places We Love For Families

Austria and the Dolomites are our alpine answer. They are not the only one.

• Costa Rica — wildlife, beaches and adventure scaled to every age, with a pura vida culture that adores children. Sloths for the little ones, ziplines for the brave, and easy flights from most of the US.

• The Caribbean — short flights, calm water and resorts where a strong kids club buys parents a real vacation. Ideal for a first trip, younger kids, or a shorter window.

• Italy — pasta solves most problems, and Italians treat children like small celebrities. Pair a city or two with a countryside or coastal stay and let the kids run through a vineyard while you enjoy what it produces.

Packing For Your Kids' Trip

The right gear changes everything — from airplane snacks to stroller hacks to the shoes they actually wear. Here is everything we pack when we travel with ours.

Shop our favorite kids travel essentials

Our Honest Advice

Do not wait for the perfect age. There is not one — there are only trips designed around the age your children are right now. Pick a family-focused home base, choose a region that does the heavy lifting, keep the itinerary shorter than you think, and let the rest unfold.

We Have Already Done The Research

Every hotel in this post is somewhere we have stayed with our own kids. I have handed my children over to these kids clubs, eaten these dinners, tested these rooms at bedtime, and learned which mountain trails end with strudel and which end with a meltdown. That is the part I want to save you.

Because the truth is that the years where your kids want to hold your hand through a village square are short. Ours were two and three when we started, and some of my favorite memories happened before they were old enough to remember them. They will not recall the lake in Hallstatt. I will remember it for the rest of my life. That is reason enough to go now.

You should not have to spend your evenings comparing floor plans and reading reviews to get that. Let us do it. We book these properties with preferred-partner perks — upgrades when available, resort credits, early check-in and late checkout, and extras that do not appear on any booking site — at the same rate you would pay on your own.

Let’s plan your family’s first big trip — fill out our inquiry form and we will match you with the right hotel, the right region, and the perks that come with booking through us.

Book our favorite Austria stay here — we will handle the rooms, the perks, and every detail in between.