Top Family Holidays For 2019

Relax and educate in one holiday

Increasingly, parents are looking for educational value in family trips. This doesn’t necessarily mean forgoing the annual beach holiday; simply coordinate your dose of sun with the chance to bring the curriculum alive.

Plump for the sands of the Amalfi coast and you can inspire Latin scholars with a Pompeii visit. Set your picnic rug on the black sand of Lanzarote and you’ll transform the geography lesson into 3D.

Is your child a budding biologist? There is no greater thrill than sitting in a safari truck together, tracking animals. You’ll find few activities engage a group more than the pursuit of knowledge.

Whether it’s an Egyptian pharaoh or China’s Qin emperor who captures your child’s interest, the curriculum is driving bookings at high-end operators such as Abercrombie & Kent. Kuoni, known for its beach holidays, also reports a rise in “experiences” for families to enjoy.

Watch these pages in coming months for tips on how to travel the curriculum – and check out savvy operators for ready-made packages

Watch your footprint

Budget is the single most important factor in choosing a holiday; that’s not going to change, particularly with the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. But ethics are inching their way towards the top of our priorities when it comes to choosing family operators.

Most important to families is the environmental impact of their trip. We can book with companies that shun straws, offer reusable bottles for tap water, have positive impacts on the communities where they operate and treat their staff well.

Small hotels and operators have been leading the way in banning plastic bottles, but larger operators are now following: before revealing its financial woes in the autumn, Thomas Cook pledged to remove 70 million items of single-use plastics over 2019 – a move the company made after two thirds of its customers said they’d be more likely to book with a company that took environmental issues seriously.

Leading the charge to teach our children about our responsibility to protect our environment are five-time Olympic medallist Sir Ben Ainslie, left, and his wife, the journalist Lady Ainslie, who are fronting the National Marine Aquarium’s campaign to put oceans at the heart of the national curriculum. Finally, thanks to the popularity of Blue Planet and increasing awareness of the impact of plastic on marine life, this topic is getting traction.

The skip-generation holiday

Three-generation holidays have always been popular. The ever-savvier family travel market has noted this and offered itineraries tailored to multi-age groups: hotels with a quiet zone for grandparents (try the Martinhal group in Portugal); cruises with lectures for Grandpa and water slides for his progeny (try Norwegian for variety); a near-endless array of villas and cottages offering comfort and play.

But 2019 is the year grandparents and grandchildren will leave the middle-aged at home: welcome to Skip-Generation Holidays. As baby boomers retire, two of their top priorities are family and travel. Whether it’s a trip of a lifetime, or kind grandparents taking the children off their parents’ hands for a few weeks, this is all about building a deeper connection – with support.

Kuoni and Abercrombie & Kent have reported increased bookings. You might also try Road Scholar, an American company that sends grandparents and grandchildren on learning breaks – a friend’s six-year-old took his grandfather on a marine biology week on the North Carolina coast last summer and had the sort of adventure you just can’t have when Mum and Dad are cramping your style.

Hot destinations

Families flock to wherever there’s sun and fun. There are two standout destinations for 2019 that have these in spades: Turkey, for short-haul, and Mexico for longer trips.

Turkish holiday bookings began to fall after a series of bombings in 2015 were followed by an attempted coup in July 2016, with large tour operators pulling their Turkish properties entirely as demand dropped. However, after a successful 2018, Turkey has already seen dramatic rises in bookings for this year; its beautiful beaches and keen prices are hard for British families to resist.

Last year Mark Warner opened Phokaia Beach Resort in Turkey. Tui has also expanded capacity in the country for this summer, including its new Tui Family Life Ephesus, on the west coast. But it’s not all adventuring teens: Tots to Travel, the early years specialist, has reported a big rise in villa bookings after 18 months of none at all.

Mexico, long the stalwart of American family holidays, has been on the rise for British families on all points of the economic scale. At the more affordable end, Mexico tops Tui’s long-haul regions for popularity, but with its culture, beaches and great food, it is also filling the space that Sri Lanka has occupied for the past few years of top luxury family destination offered by more bespoke operators.