Four Rooms and a Kitchen

Hester Callow · 17 July 2026

How we stopped booking hotel rooms for family trips, and what changed when we did.

The Hotel Habit

For years the default was rooms: two or three of them, breakfast at whatever hour the dining room decided, and everybody meeting in a lobby to work out the day.

It is fine for two people on a short trip. With parents, children and a week, it turns into a permanent low-level negotiation conducted in corridors.

What We Do Now

One property, a kitchen, and a table everyone fits round. The first time we did it the difference was immediate enough to be slightly annoying, because it should have been obvious years earlier.

It changed how we book everywhere. The trip that finally converted us was in Indonesia, where instead of a resort we took a four-room villa in Bali and spent the week as a household rather than as guests. The same logic now applies whether we are in Turkey or anywhere else.

Where It Does Not Work

Below about four people the maths stops favouring it and the admin stops being worth it. For a couple, a good small hotel wins comfortably.

It also needs one person willing to own the booking and the shopping. That job should rotate and the person doing it should be thanked properly, which in our family it generally is not.