FAMILY HOLIDAY TRAVEL SURVIVAL GUIDE: INSIDER TIPS FOR STRESS FREE AND SANITY SAVING TRAVELS!!!
HOLIDAY FAMILY TRAVEL EXPERT: TRISH McDERMOTT
It’s no secret that traveling with children, and especially with babies, during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays can be exhausting and incredibly stressful. Just under 50 million Americans will be traveling for Thanksgiving this month. Families love to go home for the holidays! For traveling families, crowded airports, unwieldly baggage, long flights with cranky little ones, and hotels and vacation rentals that don’t always meet their very basic needs can be incredibly stressful.
Nationally recognized family travel expert, and co-founder of Babierge (baby + concierge), Trish McDermott, comes to the rescue. Trish will provide insider family travel tips to help you and yours overcome the challenges of holiday season travel. She will discuss everything from how to book kid-friendly accommodations, why it’s so much easier to rent baby gear (and even a Christmas tree or Menorah) at your destination than it is to lug it through the airport, how to easily and quickly get your family through the TSA checkpoint, how to survive a long flight with little ones, and how to guarantee your baby will sleep well at your vacation destination After all, holiday family travel should be a restful and relaxing vacation for everyone—even parents!
Some of the Family Holiday Travel Tips Travel Trish McDermott offers are:
• Where to stay: Book hotels and vacation rentals that meet basic baby and toddler needs. Safe, warm, quiet, equipped with a bathtub, easy access to food and diapers at a nearby store and located near a local park or play structure (or sledding hill). Bonus points if the hotel offers kid-friendly holiday activites.
• What not to pack: The lighter you pack, the easier you travel. Aim to fly with a carry-on only. Use a baby equipment rental company like Babierge to rent gear like cribs, strollers, car seats, high chairs and toys which can be delivered to your hotel or vacation rental. You can even have a pre-lit Christmas tree and stockings for your firecplace delivered.
• Christmas Gifts: Order everything online and have your Christmas gifts shipped directly to your location. Save the boxes to ship them home too.
• Baby Jet Lag: A week before you travel begin to gradually adjust your baby’s naptime and bedtime to move closer to your destination time zone. Consider a flight that takes off right around baby’s bedtime too.
• Avoid TSA Meltdowns:
1. Ask to be put in a special line for families (this often moves you to the front of the line).
2. Dress everyone in metal-free clothing and older children in shoes that are easy to remove and put back on. Children under 12 can wear their shoes during screening.
3. Explain security procedures and their purpose to your children in advance.
4. If you are holding a toddler when you go through screening and the alarm beeps, both you and your little one are subject to search. If your toddler can walk, encourage her to walk through on her own.
5. You can bring formula, breast milk and juice in greater than 3.4 ounce bottles through screening. Inform the TSA officer you are carrying them in advance and remove them from your carry-on bag for separate screening. They might get tested for explosives though. Ice packs are OK too.
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• Survive Long Flights:
1. Try to sit near the front of the plane—it’s a quieter ride.
2. Dress your children in comfortable AND adorable clothing. Your fellow passengers will forgive super cute children for noisiness or other minor misbehaving.
3. Bring one-day’s-worth of baby food, other snacks, drinks and a change of clothing for each child and yourself—holiday flight delays are always a possibility.
4. Quiet toys keep everyone happy.
5. Your airplane tray table is a petri dish of disgusting germs. Bring a tray table cover and keep it covered during the entire flight.
• Get Some Sleep: When babies sleep well, everyone gets to rest and recharge on vacation. Do your best to replicate your baby’s and toddler’s sleep environment at home. Use a full-size wooden crib and bring the sheet your baby last slept on at home. (Don’t wash it.) This way while he may be in a new environment, his sheet smells and feels like home to him.
• Leverage The Collaborative Economy: Millennial parents will look to the sharing economy for much of their holiday travel this year. Leave the family dog with a loving family via Rover, rather than at a kennel, stay at a kid-friendly rental via Airbnb or Kid & Coe, have your car seats delivered right to the airport via Babierge and then grab a Lyft to get to your hotel.
Trish McDermott Bio
Trish McDermott is an experienced radio and television spokesperson, having honed her skills as a co-founder of Match.com and the site’s global spokesperson for ten years. She has appeared on The Today Show, 60 Minutes, NPR, Nightline and just about every radio and television program that aired segments on dating, romance and the Internet during her decade at Match.. Trish was talent for Match.com’s radio commercials and featured in onboard television program for Princess Cruise’s “Romance Department.” Now as Co-founder of the world’s largest baby gear rental platform Babierge (baby + concierge) at www.babierge.com, McDermott has developed a keen expertise about, and can speak articulately to, the pain points of family travel and how the collaborative economy is addressing them. Babierge is helping families travel to over 100 destinations in the US and Canada and opening new destinations weekly.
Thought for the Day…