How To Find the Best Hotels and Rentals in Europe When Traveling with Kids

If you’ve started searching for accommodations anywhere in Europe for an upcoming family trip, you know how difficult it can be to find hotel rooms that will fit your whole family in just one room, or rentals that include the amenities you need (like air conditioning!).

Especially once you are outside of the major cities and tourist areas, you are lucky if you find a hotel room to sleep more than 2 people (let alone 4 or 5!)

As a mom to 3 kids who often travels with extended family as well (grandparents or aunts and uncle come along for the trips to help me with the kids every since my late husband passed away from brain cancer in Oct 2023) - I have spent a LOT ( I repeat - a LOT) of time researching places to stay for our European trips.

Photo: My Dad “Papa” and my 2 year old son Teddy on the amazing private terrace with views of Lake Como from our rental in Tremezzo, Italy - 10 out of 10 recommend this amazing place for your stay in Lake Como!

So here are my best tips for finding hotels and rentals (AirBnBs, VRBOs, HomeToGo, etc) in Europe!

1. See if there is a Novotel or Novotel Suites in the area you are staying in.

Novotel (part of the Accor Group) is a chain of hotels in Europe that cater to families. They offer things like cribs, roll away beds, nightlights and other kid-necessities in your room upon request (less for you to pack in your suitcase!). Plus they have healthy meals for kids, plus highchairs, booster seats, cutlery, bibs, and plates in their on-site restaurants.

• Kids aged up to 16 stay and eat breakfast for free when sharing a family room with their parents.

• If your family leaves on a Sunday, you're able to request late check-out up until 17:00 (5 PM!) depending on hotel availability.

• Discounted 2nd Rooms: Book one guest room and receive a 50% discount on the second for your kids aged up to 16 years.

• They have a “family zone” that offers board games, crafts, and other kid-focused entertainment (My kids loved this space and requested to go down and play many times during our stay!)

• Welcome gift for children: I’m not sure if it is every property, but most will offer a little gift for your kids upon arrival (our kids got tiny little stuffed animals in France that they adored)

Photo: Novotel Suites in Colmar, France

2. Check to see if there is a Mercure Hotel in the area.

Mecure is another “midscale” hotel chain from the Accor Group of hotels, offering properties throughout Europe as well. While this brand does not cater to families as explicitly as Novotel does, many of the properteis are extremely family friendly as well.

• Mercure Hotels also offers the ability to book a second room for your children and save 50% on that second room. They state that they will “choose an adjoining room or one that’s just next door whenever possible, for that extra peace of mind.” (I would always call the hotel when booking and make sure they have availability to do this for your dates!

• Some of the Mecure properties also offer family rooms, the ability to request extra beds to be setup in your room, and amenities for children

• As a mid tier hotel, the pricing is reasonable and I think the value is exceptional for what you get. Make it stand out

Photo: Mecure London Hyde Park Hotel

3. Use Booking.com to see at a glance ALL of your options in a given area + configurations of room types.

Booking.com is one of the world’s largest online travel agencies, and one of my favorite features is that when you put in your dates and total number of travelers (be sure to enter the exact ages of your kids too!) it will not just show you what is available, but give you different options for how you could configure rooms to fit your group.

The note in Green from Booking.com is SO helpful here - it shows that rooms ARE available at this property for our group, but we need to select two of these room types.

For instance, when we were in Lucerne, Switzerland this past June and had 4 adults + 3 kids (one under 2), it showed me that we could book any of these options to fit our family:

• One 1-bedroom Suite (King bed with sofa bed)+ 1 standard king bed hotel room

• OR 3 regular hotel rooms

• OR one Grand Suite (King Bed, rollaway double cot, pull out sofa bed + crib).

I find this to be EXTREMELY valuable. Sometimes if you try to go to the hotel’s website directly, it will not give you the information you need to know - like the fact that they can add a rollaway bed to the same room - but booking.com will show that to you. Booking.com in recent years has gotten more and more rental apartments and homes added in as well - making it even easier to compare ALL your options.

NOTE: Hotels only “give” so many open rooms to third party booking sites like Booking.com. So if you are on their website and a property you want isn’t available, it doesn’t actually mean it is completely booked - it might just mean Booking.com has “sold” all the rooms THEY had at that property.

In that case, it makes sense to go back and check directly with the hotel itself, or to do a Google Search to see if any other third party booking sites (like Expedia) have availability.

4. Don’t forget to check rental apartments - HomeToGo, VRBO and AirBnB

Depending on where we are going and how long we will be staying there, I sometimes will book a rental and sometimes a hotel. For longer trips (like our almost 3 weeks in Europe last summer) - I like to do a combination of both. HomeToGo has a larger footprint in Europe and some properties on that site are not on the others that Americans are more familiar with. I should note that Booking.com will sometimes also “pull in” rental apartments into their listings as well.

If I already know our destination, I sometimes will do a google search with the location name + “vacation rentals” in the search. So for instance, when we went to the Swiss Alps, I knew we wanted to stay in the car-free village of Wengen, so I searched “Wengen” + “Rental apartments” in the search bar (you could also ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or other AI tools!)

That’s how I found the amazing rental agency - Wengen Apartments . By booking directly with the rental company, I was able to save in fees, and also had direct contact with the host, who was amazing to work with.

We found this amazing rental in Wengen for our trip to the Swiss Alps. It slept 8, had ample space for the kids to run around, and had the MOST AMAZING VIEWS from a private balcony overlooking the Lauterbrunnen Valley.

Accommodations we LOVED on Recent Trips to Europe with Kids (all stays were in 2024 with 3 kids and 4 adults!)

Here are some of the best places we’ve stayed that we would 100% recommend to any family!

1. Colmar, France -Novotel Suites Colmar (Budget friendly)

2. Lake Como, Italy - Residence Tremezzo (Great value)

3. Wengen, in the Swiss Alps - Wengen Apartments (Splurge - like everything in Switzerland!)

4. Annecy, France - Rivage Hotel & Spa (Mid tier)

5. Lucerne, Switzerland - Hotel Schwizerhof (Splurge)

6. Fussen, Germany - Hotel Sommer (Great Value)