Hotel options - max room occupancy
Discussion
We are a family of 5, my wife and I, 16 year old step-daughter, 3 year old and a 2 year old and I'm looking for the best options for booking hotel rooms.
Ideally we want one room for all of us together, but it seems having 5 people in a room is a no-go for many hotel chains even if you have one bed suite type rooms with sofa bed etc, so we end up having to have 2 rooms and splitting us up, wife and I + 2yo in one room and 16yo + 3yo in the other.
This is ok, especially if they are connecting rooms, but ultimately if you go peak time to a popular place (looking at central London in summer etc) it can rapidly get expensive having to double-up on everything.
Surely we are not the first family of 5 to have these challenges, so looking for any suggestions as to how we can do it differently.
I know AirBNB and getting an apartment/house is probably the answer, but for ease of use (rightly or wrongly) hotels with restaurants / swimming pools / car parking etc tend to tick our boxes better.
Any tips on how to "beat" the automated booking systems that most hotel chains seem to use? Am I missing something obvious?
Ideally we want one room for all of us together, but it seems having 5 people in a room is a no-go for many hotel chains even if you have one bed suite type rooms with sofa bed etc, so we end up having to have 2 rooms and splitting us up, wife and I + 2yo in one room and 16yo + 3yo in the other.
This is ok, especially if they are connecting rooms, but ultimately if you go peak time to a popular place (looking at central London in summer etc) it can rapidly get expensive having to double-up on everything.
Surely we are not the first family of 5 to have these challenges, so looking for any suggestions as to how we can do it differently.
I know AirBNB and getting an apartment/house is probably the answer, but for ease of use (rightly or wrongly) hotels with restaurants / swimming pools / car parking etc tend to tick our boxes better.
Any tips on how to "beat" the automated booking systems that most hotel chains seem to use? Am I missing something obvious?
We are in the same boat, although our kids aren't old enough for their own room, which would mean my wife and I taking a room each with some kids. But we haven't done that yet.
I think there was an overnight stay in Marlow last year where we just booked one room and declared 2 kids 2 adults, then i called them up the next day and explained our predicament and we agreed to add a fold out bed to the room. There might have been a £25 charge or they might have actually waived the charge. If you do this, just make sure you do book the largest room as part of your booking so that a fold out bed can fit in the room.
I think there was an overnight stay in Marlow last year where we just booked one room and declared 2 kids 2 adults, then i called them up the next day and explained our predicament and we agreed to add a fold out bed to the room. There might have been a £25 charge or they might have actually waived the charge. If you do this, just make sure you do book the largest room as part of your booking so that a fold out bed can fit in the room.
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