Family travel can be quite costly if you do not know where to find the best deals. These are the resources that I frequently use for finding travel deals and booking for our trip. It includes my favourite online booking sites for accommodations, flights, transportation, tours as well as attraction tickets.
Accommodations
Booking
My favourite site for booking accommodations is Booking.com. It is the most user-friendly website especially for booking family accommodations as it allows me to search for accommodations for multiple adults and children. (Not all booking sites do that). It has photos of different room types. This is useful because sometimes the hotel might state that the accommodation is for two but the beds are big enough to fit 2 adults and 2 kids. It also clearly specifies whether kids stay for free when using existing beddings. Details of parking fees and Wifi are also clearly specified.
Agoda
For Asian destinations, I sometimes book my accommodation through Agoda as they occasionally have good deals. I also found that Agoda had some accommodations in Asia that were not available on other sites.
Transportation, Tours and Attraction Tickets
Rental Cars
Rentalcars.com connects you to the biggest brands in car hire, including Hertz, Avis, Europcar, Alamo, Budget, and Dollar. When renting a car for family vacations, the number of luggages the car boot can store is very important. Rentalcars.com clearly states this for each car proposed.
Get Your Guide
It is always good to book your tickets and tours online before the trip. It will not only save you time queuing for tickets but also help you find the best deals online. Many times, we get good discounts when we book our tours or tickets online and in advance.
Voyagin
Similar to Get Your Guide, Voyagin also offers tours and attraction tickets but they cover mostly Asian destinations like Japan, Malaysia, and South Korea. Voyagin also provides restaurants reservations for some cities.
Catch That Bus
For booking of express buses between Singapore and Malaysia, you can try using Catch that Bus.
Flights
We’ve been booking several of our flights via Expedia. It’s been offering quite great rates.
Packing for Travel
One of our favourite website to purchase stuff for travel is Lazada.sg. It has a variety of budget-friendly travel items like travel adaptors, travel pouches, sunglasses, bags, etc.
AliExpress is also a great place to shop, especially for travel gadgets.
Getting around
I find Google Maps very useful when planning for a trip. It helps you determine what you can do within one day. I love the street view function on Google Maps. Checking out the maps and street view may help you familiarise with the area and locate your hotel or attractions faster. With kids, you want to find the shortest way to get to your hotel. For example, if I didn’t check out the street view on Google Maps, I would probably have gone out of the wrong exit at the train station and walk 20 minutes to get to a hotel in Florence, instead of just 3 minutes through the correct exit. This makes a lot of difference when travelling with kids. Also, checking out the street view of your hotel may help you decide whether or not to stay at a particular accommodation. There was one time when I wanted to book a hotel in Italy, but decided against it after looking at the street view and saw how unsafe it looked.
For Travel Ideas
To get ideas on places to visit
- Pinterest – Pinterest has become my favourite tool to get inspirations on where to go for a family vacation. By entering the destination in the Pinterest search tool, you can find great photos of the destination with links to the article.
- Google – Google is everyone’s favourite search engine to find anything and everything. Just google your destination and out comes a list of websites about the destination. Go to Google Images too to look at pictures of a destination.
- Travel Blogs – Travel Blogs are also a good travel resource to find inspirations for travel. You get candid traveller photos from real people sharing their travel stories. The list of useful travel blogs are listed below.
Blogroll
Here are some that I read:
Santa Fe Travelers
Here are some of the Singapore/Malaysia-related blogs that I read:
Hello, thanks for this nice blog. After reading your article on Krabi, I decided to visit with my husband and 3 kids (5,7,9 years old). We had a lovely vacation. Thanks. I am now back on your site to inspire me for family vacation 2018. We have on the list South Africa, Kenya or Costa Rica ; ) Thanks, Vicky & family from Switzerland
Hi Vicky, It is nice to hear that you and your family had a great time in Krabi. We loved it too, and we are glad that the article on Krabi was useful.