Yangshou, China
Luxury family travel

Just because you have children doesn’t mean your luxury travelling life has ended and the only places you can go to are campings or all-inclusive kids resorts. These days many luxury resorts, boutique stays, and hip hotel labels welcome parents with their kids offering more children oriented services. The travel industry has seen that this segment of travel is a booming market nowadays as more and more parents realise that travelling with their children is so much fun and a beautiful way to make long lasting memories.

When my husband and I had our first baby, she’s now a little lady, we didn’t stop making beautiful trips and going to nice hotels. People were telling us that it didn’t matter if she was on the beach in a tent an hours drive or a 12 hours flight from our home. For a baby, a beach is a beach and a bed is a bed. And sure she didn’t notice the difference at her age, but we did. And if we were happy, she was happy. So we decided that no matter what, we would continue our travelling life with her and her siblings if she would ever have any.

Her first trip was to the South of France and her second to South Africa, many trips followed and by the time she was 1,5 years old and her brother was born she had visited more than 10 countries already! After her brother, another brother was born, followed by a baby sister to make our family complete. When our youngest girl was 3 years old we decided to make a trip around the world. In our hectic life it sometimes is hard to find time for each other and what better way to have all the time in the world than going on a world trip. It has always been a dream for me to make a trip around the world. And this was even better than in my dreams, doing the trip with all my loved ones.

And no we didn’t only sleep in apartments or drive and camp out in a camper van. We loved the variation of hip hotels, luxurious places, local gems together with tree houses, family resorts and apartments. Our budget was not unlimited, but we tried to find the best deals and a nice balance between nice for us and child friendly. And so we ended up with lots of great places to stay and recommend to people just like you.

Since we’ve been back we haven’t stopped travelling and still take every opportunity we get to visit new and exciting places and destinations. I’d love to see all the countries in the world. But first I’ll try to visit my top 10 bucket list destinations. Any recommendations on those are very welcome.

Where the passion started

I’m Alex, born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. For me Amsterdam is one of the most charming cities on earth. A beautiful old town with a lot of history, compact, liberal and trendy. I did not live there long when I was young. I grew up in several countries as the daughter of an hotelier. From a very young age I was lucky enough to start travelling with my parents to luxury hotels and resorts around the world because of my fathers profession.

After graduating high school in the Caribbean, I moved back to the Netherlands to study Business Administration. I worked for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in the marketing department after my graduation with great pleasure for almost a decade. During those years I travelled around the world for business purposes, and I still visited beautiful places in Europe, the US and Latin America. Of course working for an airline made it very easy to fly all over the place, even for just a nice long weekend.

Now married to a great husband and mother to four wonderful children, not working full time anymore, but spending every moment I have on raising the children to become honest, hard working, kind and good human beings. I am very happy and fortunate to have the time to take care of them and give them the attention they deserve and need.

If you ask me… “When is your happiest time?”, I would probably say that I’m happiest while travelling with my family. When travelling there is just so much time to bond and discover new things, emotions and places together.

I don’t like travelling alone. An occasional weekend alone with my hubby or friends is very welcome. But whenever possible I take our entire crew with me. That means next to my husband our children. They have been spoiled rotten, in travel sense, and I think my two daughters future husbands will have a pretty difficult task finding a honeymoon destination they haven’t been. But I try to teach them to always enjoy every vacation and be grateful for the experience. Every trip is different and they should learn from each and every one of them. Hopefully some day they will remember, understand and implement the advice their wise mother once gave them ;).

Why travel in style with kids

Many people I know ask me for advice on travel routes or nice things to do while visiting a country. As soon as vacation planning starts people call or text me with the question, do you know a nice place for us to stay or do you have some tips to make travelling easier with the kids? So I thought in stead of writing recommendations every time for just one family or person, let’s create a website for everyone to enjoy, use and inspire! That’s how “Travel in Style with Kids” was born.

We also created the “Travel in Style with Kids” hotel label. Founded on factual services and amenities offered to children by the hotels we stayed at. Listing these hotels will hopefully make it easier for parents to choose which hotel to stay with the kids. But not every hotel we’ve stayed in is on the list. Hotels not offering the majority of services are just mentioned in the destinations pages (thus hotels without the “Travel in Style with Kids” label). And hotels we didn’t like, even if they were offering the majority or all services on the list, will not be mentioned at all on the website.

By no means do I pretend to have seen the entire world and know it all. I am far from perfect! But we have seen and tried a lot, learned through trial and error,  and that’s what I want to share with you. And hopefully inspire more people to travel with their children.

Everything posted on this site is really experienced by me and my family and to our opinion and taste. Pictures are ours and copyrighted, please respect that and don’t use them without permission. As I want to keep everything on the site pure and to our own standard, I do not accept guest posts or write about places I haven’t been. On the “Travel in Style with Kids” Facebook page however, I invite people to share their own travel tips and recommendations on fun and luxury family travel (in that order). Please feel free to visit and share yours. 

Love, Alexxx