5 Things that kids and teens rate as their top priorities on vacation
Before you spend money booking your next trip, ask yourself this question: what do my kids really enjoy on vacation? Their priorities may not be the same as yours, and kids under the age of 12 have different needs than tween and teens. Booking.com collected reviews from over 22,500 children around the world, ages 5 to 15, to find out what’s most important to them.
We’ve taken those results and paired them with recommendations that fulfill kids’ deepest desires.
What’s important to kids (ages 5-11)?
1. Pool
If you’ve been traveling with kids for any length of time, the desire for a pool will come as no surprise. Even if you’re just staying in a chain hotel on a road trip from point A to point B, make sure it has a pool. For extra parenting points, kids in the survey say make sure the pool has cool slides, too.
In the USA, there are plenty of resorts that double as water parks like Schlitterbahn Beach Resort & Water Park on South Padre Island, Texas or Wilderness Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. Internationally, we haven’t found any water resorts that top the ones in Dubai!
2. Beach
Next on the list, kids rate a sandy beach. If you’ve got little ones, look for calm surf like at El Conquistador in Puerto Rico or off Sanibel Island, Florida. But beaches don’t have to have palm trees to please kids. Check out the beach in Grand Haven, Michigan or our picks for family beaches in Coastal Maine.
3. Activities that they can’t do at home
Younger kids want to experience something new and out of the ordinary. How about roller skating on top of a mountain at Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows in California or sand boarding at the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado.
If you’re traveling abroad, up the ante by hugging koalas in Brisbane, Australia or riding elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
4. Evening activities so they can stay up late
Yep, staying up past their bedtimes ranked in the top five for kids, ages 5 to 11. Pick a resort that offers evening family activities like techno glow parties at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Arizona or pirate dinner shows at the all-inclusive Finest Playa Mujeres in Cancun, Mexico.
5. Other kids to play with
Rounding out the top 5, kids want to play with other kids on vacation. Look for a resort that has a kids’ club, where your child can do engaging activities with other kids of the same age. For example, Disney’s Aulani Hawaii Resort and Spa on Oahu offers a kids’ club called Aunty’s Beach House, where kids explore Hawaiian-themed activities together.
What’s important to tweens & teens?
1. WiFi
Like it or not, tweens and teens in the survey identified a fast internet connection as their top priority on vacation. And according to Booking.com, the best place to find it is Japan.
However, that’s not to say that teenagers are incapable of enjoying an unplugged vacation to a national park or a cruise where they’re engaged in nature. We’ve seen teens love those kinds of vacations with our very own eyes!
2. Pool
Like their younger counterparts, teens, too, highly value a great pool, something with a cool vibe like the Cabana Bay Beach Beach Resort at Universal Orlando or the Imperial Boat House Beach Resort on Ko Samui in Thailand.
3. Lots of activities
Teens like to be kept busy doing things that they can brag to their friends about at home like skeet shooting at The Omni Homestead in Virginia or racing down the fastest track in the world in a bobsled at the Whistler Sliding Centre in Canada.
4. Beach
Teens gravitate toward beaches with a little attitude, like the ones on our Top Beaches in Los Angeles list. But the beach doesn’t necessarily have to be a sandy stretch along the ocean. For example, our teen travelers loved the beach at Conco D’Oro Camping Village on Lake Maggiore in Italy. Then again, who wouldn’t love Lake Maggiore?!
5. Makes a good social media photo
If you really want to make your teen happy, take them to a place where they can snap a killer photo for their social media accounts. Ideas? Looking down on Machu Picchu in Peru, standing in front of the Sydney Opera House in Australia or sliding down a glass chute that hangs off the 70th floor of the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles.
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