You’ve decided to do it. Or you’re close to deciding. The dream has been sitting in the back of your mind long enough and you’re ready to make it real. The only problem is: the world is very large, your children are various ages and have various opinions, and every time you open a browser to start looking, twenty tabs later you are somehow more confused than when you started.
We have been there. Here is how we would think about it.
Before you look at a single destination, answer this question: what do you want your family to walk away with?
This sounds like a philosophical question. It is actually a practical one, because the answer determines almost everything else.
Most families want some combination of the above. That’s fine. But having one primary answer keeps you from making the very common mistake of trying to do everything on a first trip and doing none of it particularly well.
If the answer is “we want a first trip that is spectacular but not overwhelming, and where English is widely spoken and infrastructure is excellent,” that narrows the list very helpfully.
If the answer is “we want to experience a completely different culture and way of life,” your destination list looks one way.
If the answer is “we want beautiful scenery, outdoor adventure, and hiking,” your destination list looks another way entirely.
If the answer is “we want history – the kind that makes the textbooks come alive,” you are looking at Europe, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia.
If the answer is “we want our children to understand how most of the world lives,” you are probably looking at a developing-world destination that requires more planning but delivers an experience that no amount of classroom education can replicate.
Age matters less than most families think — but it does matter. Here is how we think about it:
Children under three are the most logistically demanding but the least emotionally complicated. They do not have opinions about itineraries, they sleep when they need to sleep, and they adapt to new environments with remarkable flexibility. The hard part is the gear, the schedule disruption, and the sheer physical work of carrying a non-walking child through airports and up cobblestone streets. Stroller-friendly destinations – Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand – are significantly more manageable than the alternatives. An international trip with a toddler is possible. We’ve done it. Just plan extra time for everything and lower your pace expectations.
Children aged four through ten are, in our experience, wonderful travel companions. Old enough to remember the experiences, young enough to still be enchanted by novelty, and physically capable of real hiking and activity. These are the years to be most ambitious.
Children aged eleven through fourteen are starting to have real opinions and real interests. Involve them in planning. A thirteen-year-old who helped choose the destination is a fundamentally different travel companion than one who was informed of the destination two weeks before departure.
Teenagers (fifteen and up) are full-fledged travel companions when engaged properly. They can carry their own bags, help with the younger children, navigate a subway system, handle a long travel day, and contribute genuinely to group decisions. They are also more than capable of making a trip miserable if they feel like travel is something being done to them rather than with them. Include them
A family that has never taken an international trip should not book Asia as their first adventure. Not because it’s beyond you – it may not be – but because every trip builds skills and confidence that make the next one better. Your first international trip will have more uncertainty, more logistical friction, and more moments of “we have no idea what we’re doing” than any subsequent trip. The destination should allow space for that learning curve.
First-trip destinations that work particularly well for families new to international travel:
Budget has two components: the actual cost of the trip, and the opportunity cost of waiting until you have more.
On the actual cost: flights are the biggest variable, and they are more manageable than most families assume once you have access to cheap flight deals and a points strategy in place. Our general practice is to have a list of a few places we would love to go next, and then wait to see what flight deals come across our emails over the coming months. When the $400 round-trip ticket to Tokyo pops up, we are ready to book it immediately! See our full guide on how we fund our trips for the specific mechanics. For ground costs – accommodation, food, activities – vacation rental properties (Airbnb, VRBO) are almost always more economical than hotels for families of five or more, often dramatically so.
On the opportunity cost: a trip that costs $12,000 today will not cost less in five years. Airfare adjusts with inflation. Hotels adjust with inflation. The activities and experiences you want to have are not becoming cheaper. Waiting for a budget that is “more comfortable” is, in practice, waiting indefinitely.
| A practical note on budget: The most expensive line item on any family international trip is almost always flights. The second most expensive is almost always accommodation. If you can address both with airline deals, points, and vacation rentals, the on-the-ground cost of international travel is often comparable to what you would spend on a domestic vacation – sometimes less. |
Most of the best international family destinations are not accessible on a long weekend. Plan for at minimum ten days, ideally at least two weeks. We shoot for a month to really experience the place, but realize that this is not often feasible. You need a couple of days to adjust to the time zone and hit your stride, and then you need actual time to be somewhere rather than just passing through it.
The families we know who have the best travel experiences are the ones who go to fewer places and stay longer. The families who are most exhausted and least satisfied are the ones who tried to do six countries in ten days. Resist the temptation to maximize destinations. Maximize time in each place instead.
Age matters less than most families think — but it does matter. Here is how we think about it:
Children under three are the most logistically demanding but the least emotionally complicated. They do not have opinions about itineraries, they sleep when they need to sleep, and they adapt to new environments with remarkable flexibility. The hard part is the gear, the schedule disruption, and the sheer physical work of carrying a non-walking child through airports and up cobblestone streets. Stroller-friendly destinations – Western Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand – are significantly more manageable than the alternatives. An international trip with a toddler is possible. We’ve done it. Just plan extra time for everything and lower your pace expectations.
Children aged four through ten are, in our experience, wonderful travel companions. Old enough to remember the experiences, young enough to still be enchanted by novelty, and physically capable of real hiking and activity. These are the years to be most ambitious.
Children aged eleven through fourteen are starting to have real opinions and real interests. Involve them in planning. A thirteen-year-old who helped choose the destination is a fundamentally different travel companion than one who was informed of the destination two weeks before departure.
Teenagers (fifteen and up) are full-fledged travel companions when engaged properly. They can carry their own bags, help with the younger children, navigate a subway system, handle a long travel day, and contribute genuinely to group decisions. They are also more than capable of making a trip miserable if they feel like travel is something being done to them rather than with them. Include them
A family that has never taken an international trip should not book Asia as their first adventure. Not because it’s beyond you – it may not be – but because every trip builds skills and confidence that make the next one better. Your first international trip will have more uncertainty, more logistical friction, and more moments of “we have no idea what we’re doing” than any subsequent trip. The destination should allow space for that learning curve.
First-trip destinations that work particularly well for families new to international travel:
| A practical note on budget: The most expensive line item on any family international trip is almost always flights. The second most expensive is almost always accommodation. If you can address both with airline deals, points, and vacation rentals, the on-the-ground cost of international travel is often comparable to what you would spend on a domestic vacation – sometimes less. |
Most of the best international family destinations are not accessible on a long weekend. Plan for at minimum ten days, ideally at least two weeks. We shoot for a month to really experience the place, but realize that this is not often feasible. You need a couple of days to adjust to the time zone and hit your stride, and then you need actual time to be somewhere rather than just passing through it.
The families we know who have the best travel experiences are the ones who go to fewer places and stay longer. The families who are most exhausted and least satisfied are the ones who tried to do six countries in ten days. Resist the temptation to maximize destinations. Maximize time in each place instead.
f you asked us to pick one first international trip for a family with children between the ages of five and fifteen, on a budget that is real but not unlimited, with one to two weeks available: we would say Western Europe, with a focus on two or three cities rather than a grand tour.
London plus Paris is the most battle-tested first international trip in the world for American families. Here is why it works:
We did exactly this trip (adding in a week in Rome and Venice) in January 2020 with six children ranging in age from two to fourteen. It changed our family. It started everything.
First-time international travelers worry about things that, in practice, are rarely the problem. In the interest of saving you the anxiety:
Once you’ve chosen your destination, explore our destination-specific guides for practical advice on itinerary, accommodation, activities, and what we would do differently if we went back. And if you’re still deciding, browse our trip posts — every destination we’ve visited is documented in enough detail to help you make the call.
