Savvy Travel & Family Time

3 Tips To Make The Most of Your Family Trip To Maui

Hawaii has some of the world’s best beaches and is a magnet for families around the United States. You can go hiking in the rainforests, relax next to the stunning coastline or learn how to surf. But, there are a few things you need to keep in mind before you start your Family trip to Maui. Family holidays regardless of the age of your kids are very different from having a vacation as adults. As such, you need to plan, prepare and keep your kid’s best interests in mind.

1. Put the Time into Planning Your Family Vacation

Family holidays have the potential to be either awesome or stressful. If you book your vacation and just go with the flow, you might experience the more stressful side of things. It’s possible to go with the flow as adults, but not with kids. There are hundreds of activities to choose from spanning all of Hawaii’s islands. You should do your research weeks or months before you go on a family holiday. That way you can practically guarantee that everyone will get to do what they want.

The easiest way to plan is to sit down and talk to your family. Ask them what kind of things they want to do in Hawaii. Remember, that it’s everyone’s holiday. Not just yours. If you have younger kids, you could show them pictures or videos of different parts of Hawaii. Your goal here is to get your kids to start feeling excited about your vacation. Then you can take the opportunity to do activities that you know they’ll like when you’re in Hawaii.

Older children and teens should have a critical role in helping you plan your vacation. As they get older, their interests change. You might want to book your teens into a surfing school at Waikiki Beach. If you search online, you can find the best school that offers the best value for your needs. Speak to your teens. Ask them if they want to just learn for a day or if they want to take the lessons a step further. Then, you can book the right amount of classes.

In short, the more time you spend planning and involving your kid’s in the planning, the more likely you are to have an awesome trip.

2. Always Put Your Kid’s Interest Ahead of Your Own

The second tip relates to the first one. If you’re going on a family holiday, you should always make sure you keep your kid’s interests ahead of your own. That means you should make sure you do a wide variety of activities and tours. You and your partner might want to sit in beachside restaurants eating catch of the day and sipping cocktails. But your kid’s won’t. Likewise, you might want to spend your days relaxing around the pool. After all, it’s a holiday and you deserve it. But again, your children will start to feel bored after the first few days.

If you’re travelling with young kids, this is especially important. You need to make sure you have a range of activities to keep them entertained on their short attention spans. Try to schedule activities around their day-to-day habits. For example, try to do the more taxing activities in the morning if your kid’s are prone to feeling cranky later in the afternoon. A top tip suggestion is to consider booking a place to stay with a kid’s club. You can find this in many of the larger resorts. The clubs have lots of activities so that your little ones can play and enjoy themselves. The bonus is that you can then go and relax around the pool. Older kids need less management, and you might want to leave them on their own inside the resort or by the pool. However, this depends on their age and your judgement.

3. Don’t Try to Do Everything

The final tip discourages you from coming up with a super active itinerary for your family vacation. It’s perfectly find to want to get out and do all the fun things in Hawaii. But you might burn out your little ones. Rather than planning something for every single day of your vacation, why not have tours or day trips on alternate days? That means one day taking things slow and easy. For example, relaxing by the pool or going for a walk along the beach. Then the next day you can go on one of the tours. This helps keep everyone happy and reduces the stress and crankiness. If you’re planning on joining a particularly long tour (for example, an all-day boat tour to go whale spotting), you might want to have two days to relax. Why not make it easier for yourselves and have a look for the most unusual things to do in Maui before traveling? That way you may have a better chance at making the most out of your time there.

This tip isn’t suggesting that you don’t go out and enjoy your time in Maui. Rather it’s encouraging you to manage your time more effectively to reflect your kid’s interests and energy levels. If you follow the first and second tips above, this final suggestion should be easy to implement. Remember, this is a family vacation. And it’s critically important to take and keep everyone’s interests at heart. You don’t want to do too much or too little during your family vacation. Instead, try to find the right balance that keeps everyone happy.

Having an Awesome Family Trip to Maui

Maui has lots of fun and exciting activities and all the ingredients for an awesome family trip. Remember to spend enough time planning the trip and to always ask your kids what they want to do. Put your interests and vacation needs ahead of your own and find a balance between doing too much and your kid’s feeling bored.