Have Toddler Will Travel [Paperback]

In this volume, Sarah Tucker dispells the myth that having a baby restricts your travel. She uses her experiences to bring parents everything they need to know to take off with their toddler. Despite often being the most difficult time to travel, it can be made easier, painless and enjoyable.

Sarah Tucker is an award-winning travel journalist. Currently editor of the Jazz FM Travel Guide, she was previously travel correspondent for Classic FM and Sky News. She is also the mother of 3-year-old toddler Tom who she regularly takes around the world.

This is what my friends screamed when I told them that I wanted to travel with my toddler son, Thomas. He was still only two years old, with a host of endearing – possibly alarming – toddler qualities: talkative (repeating verbatim every rude word at the most embarrassing times; in other words, public places); clumsy; accident prone; toddling like a robot on speed, all with the energy and sense of adventure of Indiana Jones, but without Jones’ fear of snakes. To make matters worse, in a period of only months, he had managed to succumb to more known diseases than I have yet to catch in 36 years. Coughs, colds, allergies, infections – you name it, Thomas had it. Toddlers, warned my patient GP, are more susceptible to illness
than any other age group. And Thomas was undeniable proof of that theory. So what happened to my idyllic baby? Normal, it seems, but did I really want to travel with this bundle of fun? Preparation was the answer, I mused. I would go to the library, bookshops and travel experts. I’d pick up armfuls of the many travel books out there claiming to have all the answers to travelling with children. And, I thought, hey, toddlers are children, are they not? So all those recommendations in books aimed at parents with young chil-dren, all those holiday brochures that so neatly line the shelves of the travel agents, with their inspiring advertisements for ‘family-friendly’ hotels, attractions, resorts and holidays . . . they would solve my predicament, right?
Wrong.
There is undoubtedly a wealth of information out there – all readily available from tourist offices, websites and glossy brochures – but I found most of it to be misleading. Don’t get me wrong, the travel agents I approached as a mystery shopper were, in general, well informed.

But much of the information provided was simply not relevant to small children. In fact, in the eyes of the travel industry, toddlers seem to be overlooked in the race to supply the best kids clubs and nursery facilities, neither of which is particularly relevant to a toddler’s needs.
The definition and understanding of the phrase ‘family-friendly’ is as wide as it is vague. It was time to do my own research!
So, for the past 12 months I have travelled around the UK, meeting parents in health clubs, crèches, infant schools and nurseries, asking both children and their parents what they liked and disliked about their holidays. They explained what they wanted and needed (which were not necessarily the same thing), and what they perceived to be important and attractive to a family with a toddler or two in tow. They told me which countries proved to be the most toddler-friendly, which airlines and airports were most suited to travelling with toddlers,which hotel groups and tour operators provided the best value, and which mode of transport was preferred by parents and toddlers alike.
This research was conducted with over 1000 mums and dads of toddlers throughout the UK. In general, they almost all felt that the travel industry had yet to come to grips with the concept of toddlers, and that holidays for toddlers were not only almost impossible to find,but inaccurately marketed. One father summed it up by saying, ‘It is still a rather grey area to some of the travel industry. It should be a black and white one.’
Lesson number one: Family-friendly does not mean toddler-friendly.
Toddlers are unique, or so it seems. From the almost sublime experi-ence of travelling with a baby who does little more than sleep, feed and poo, a toddler is ridiculously difficult to control and entertain. Most parents find it difficult to keep a modicum of control in their own homes or at the local supermarket. And these, of course, are known territory to a toddler. So how can parents hope to keep the show on the road in environments unknown? And is there really any possibility of something called a ‘family holiday’?
Parents who have travelled with their toddlers – either through necessity or in the desperate hope they could have a relaxing holiday together – all offered me the same advice: Don’t. ‘It is no holiday,’ I was told. ‘Family-friendly means cheap and nasty’; ‘Sarah, you’ve got
to realise you’ve downgraded by upsizing the family’; ‘Leave them at home’; ‘Don’t even contemplate self-catering, because you will end up working harder on holiday than you ever do at home’. The warnings came thick and fast.
‘Those resorts that target families are tatty around the edges, expen-sive and know you don’t have any other options,’ they advised. The ‘they’, of course, were the over 1000 parents who responded to my request for anecdotes and tips for travelling with one to four-year-olds.
It was depressing.
So whatever you want to label it – extremely challenging, or a time when patience and compromise are the order of the day – it appears that travelling is no holiday when you have a toddler in tow.
But, there are some havens of toddler-friendliness. Some are in un-expected places, and others are with companies that don’t even market their toddler-friendliness as a unique selling point. What’s more, there are holiday companies and destinations that not only cater for this
most challenging of age groups, but also remember that grown ups want to have fun and chill out, too.