Best Summer Activity Holidays for Families - Top Tips on How to Find the Right Holiday for your Family!

Posted 07-03-2019 by Sally Guillaume

It's time to organise your family summer holiday but where do you start??!!

If the mere thought of trawling the internet in search of the perfect summer holiday fills you with doom, then look no further....! 

You may be lucky and have a family who all like cycling or walking or high adrenalin sports in which case your research task is easier. However, if your family, like most families, is made up of individual characters who all have different passions and interests then trying to find a holiday that will please everyone can seem impossible.  

 With nearly 15 years experience organising family activity holidays, we think we can help!  Our fully customisable summer activity holidays have been designed for just that - meeting different family member's needs and desires! And we have chosen a part of the Alps where the sun shines more than anywhere else to meet one of the most common holiday requirements - somewhere warm and sunny. But even with this holiday, there can still be a dilemma about which activities to choose!

 Here are our tips on simplifying your research job and making the best family activity holiday choice, whatever stage of holiday planning you are at: 

1. Find Common Interests 

Brainstorm lots of places, possible experiences and activities and try and find things that you all agree on. These may be general things like 'good weather' or 'time having fun with all the family' or more specific like 'an accommodation with wifi', or 'not having to cook'  or 'mountain biking' . 

Anything that everyone agrees on should be written down on a piece of paper and put to the left of the table. If you are lucky, this may be all you have to do to choose the sort of holiday you want to start your research. If you are finding lots of differing views then try our whittling down technique...!

2. Use our Whittling Down Technique

You can use this technique for any element of a holiday, whether that be destination, type of accommodation or experiences at any level of detail to help hone your choices down. Start broad and then fine tune! 

We think you should start by choosing experiences as that is what holidays are about and once you know what experiences you agree on, you can then choose the best places for that, but there are no rules! 

Give everyone 6 pieces of paper and ask them to write down their top three dream experiences AND three experiences that would be their worst nightmare. 

Put all the dreams on the left of the table and worst nightmares on the right. If any activities or experiences have been chosen more than once in either worst nightmares or dream experiences then move these further to the left (dreams) or right (nightmares).

If the same activity or experience has been chosen as a dream and as a nightmare they cancel each other out so move these to the middle.

With your lists in front of you, you should begin to see a pattern emerging of types of experiences that work together, even if not the same. For example, it may be that mountain type sports are in strong demand which rules out a sailing holiday in the Mediterranean. 

3. Compromise 

It is quite rare to find a holiday where no-one has to make any compromises. Using our example of mountain sports, even if 80% of the dream experiences are mountain related, there could still be someone in the family who doesn't want to do any sports and just wants to sunbathe by a pool. It would be unfair to make them go on a hard core Himalayan trek.

They may have to compromise on a mountain destination which offers all the activities chosen by the rest of the family but if the destination is chosen for its good weather and an accommodation with a pool is found then the boxes are all ticked! 

4. Choosing Your Holiday

Now you know what you are looking for, your job will be much easier! The more precise your internet search the more easily you will find what you want.

If you do have a family with differing interests, then our customisable summer multi activity holiday in the Southern French Alps which allows each individual family member to choose the activities they want to do will be perfect.

If you like downhill mountain biking, have a look at our Downhill Mountain biking Week or for more of a mountain bike family journey, try our Champsaur and Valgaudemar Mountain Biking Tour.

If you are a family that likes food and walking, then choose our customisable Gourmet Walking Holiday or for serious family walkers used to full day hikes, have a look at our Tour du Vieux Chaillol Trip, which can also be customised for younger children with shorter days.

For more tips and advice, have a read of our blog on Planning a Family Holiday for Mixed Aged Children - How to Keep Everyone Happy