In this post, I’ll lay out all the options that a family of four or more might want to try when booking a trip outside of North America, including a detailed discussion of the Hyatt Family Plan rate.

And if you’re already wondering why this topic merits an explanation, here’s something that comes as a surprise to a lot of families booking their first trip abroad:

A hotel room with two queen beds is not the norm everywhere.

If you’ve grown up traveling around the US and Canada, your assumption about hotel rooms is probably that you can always choose a room with two queen-sized beds and fit four people in the room. And you might even be able to get the hotel to fit a rollaway bed in for a fifth person. And the hotel doesn’t really care how many kids you squeeze into your room, so even families of six can probably get away with one room in many situations. Raise your hand if you’ve been on road trips where you had kids in a bed and on the floor and on a rollaway and no one cared? [raises hand]

But when you look into booking hotel rooms for your family’s first trip abroad, you might be surprised to discover that searches for rooms that sleep four or more yield no results at all. In lots of countries in Europe and Asia, most standard hotel rooms allow a maximum occupancy of two, maybe three people. And it’s usually not the type of situation where you can just sneak kids in, either. The hotels ask for everyone’s passports at check-in and are subject to stricter regulations than we’re used to in the US, so you won’t want to break the rules or you may find yourself losing your reservation entirely. 

So what are your options for keeping your trip affordable if you have a family of four or more people and you want to stay somewhere where the maximum room occupancy seems to be too low for you to all stay in one room? Do you have to book two rooms every time? And won’t that double your costs? Is it even possible to save money on lodging if you have to book twice as many rooms?

I’ll start with the affordable options that aren’t booking two hotel rooms, and then move on to explain how the Hyatt Family Plan rate can save you money if you do end up deciding to book two hotel rooms.

Option One: rental accommodation (VRBO, AirBNB, etc.)

One option is to ditch the idea of a hotel and stay in a rental flat or rental house instead. We’ve found this to work really well when you’re in places where the cost of a rental is either about the same as or cheaper than the cost of two hotel rooms. You’re still paying out of pocket for your lodging, but you can usually get a rental with a kitchen and/or washing machine, and more space to spread out, which can make traveling with kids easier. 

If you book your rental through a shopping portal, you can also often earn points on a stay, and if your rental codes as travel, you could use the Capital One Venture purchase-eraser option to lower your out-of-pocket costs. The downsides to going with a rental (that we’ve learned over the years) are that what you do with your luggage can be a hassle if your train/plane departure time doesn’t line up with your checkout time, many local flats won’t have air conditioning like a big hotel will, and the customer service and quality of a flat can vary quite a lot. You also can’t really redeem points to make your stay free, other than the purchase-eraser option mentioned above. But on the other hand, having bedrooms with doors that close can make bedtime way easier for parents, you might really want access to a washing machine so you can pack lighter, and being able to shop at a grocery store and have a fridge for easy breakfast items and snacks can be a great thing that can help with picky eaters and maybe even save money on food costs.

This is the option we chose when our kids were preschoolers and had an early bedtime. We knew that we could tuck them into an actual bedroom and be able to close the door and we parents wouldn’t be stuck whispering in the dark for the rest of the night. We used our miles and points on airfare and just paid for flat rentals out of pocket. 

Option Two: non-points hotels with “family rooms”

Booking an independent hotel after exhaustively searching ([city] hotel + “family room”) until we found a decent hotel with a room that would sleep four was our go-to strategy before we started using miles and points for hotel stays. When our kids were little, we’d use our miles and points on our flights and usually end up staying in either B+Bs or hotels where we’d pay out of pocket because we were able to find specific rooms they offered for families. For example, in Paris when our kids were five years old, we stayed at Hotel de la Bretonnerie, in the Marais, because they had a reasonably priced family room for four. 

The benefit of booking these types of rooms are that you can earn points on your stay because the hotels will code as travel. But obviously you’re paying out of pocket for these stays, unless you’re able to erase part of your purchase with points afterwards. The cost to book a family room is usually much cheaper than booking two separate rooms. And because it’s all one big room, you’re not separated from the kids.

Other hotels we’ve stayed in that I know for sure have family rooms that sleep four, for some ideas: Apex hotels (a UK chain), in particular the Waterloo Place location in Edinburgh, Premier Inns (a UK chain, very bare-bones but totally adequate), Novotels in France (we stayed at this location in Bayeux), the Pan Pacific Melbourne. (Alert readers will note that Novotels are part of the Accor chain, which you can technically book with points, but Accor redemption rates are tied to the cash price of the room, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to use points for this chain.)

A small tangent about search advice: 
Search terms matter! Don’t bother searching for “family-friendly” hotels and expect to find only hotels that actually sleep two or more kids in a room. I cannot tell you how many times I’d click through search results for family-friendly hotels and realize that their definition of “family-friendly” meant they’d give your one child a free teddy bear at check-in or something similar … but they’d still only allow one child in a room with two adults. So many of these hotels that advertise being family-friendly in fact don’t actually allow two or more kids to sleep in the same room with their parents. So just keep that in mind in your searches. Lots of times they literally just mean they’re friendly to children, not that their rooms actually accommodate multiple children. Go figure.

Option Three: find a big-room needle in a points-hotel haystack

A third option is to look for hotel rooms that are both bookable with points and allow those points-bookable rooms to sleep four (or even five) people. Those do exist, but they’re unicorns. 

One great example of this type of property is the Hyatt Regency Lisbon, which allows points bookings for a suite that sleeps two adults and two children. And if you email or call the hotel before making your booking to ask if a third child is permitted, chances are good that they’ll allow a baby or toddler to stay in the room, as well, as a fifth person. It’s important to ask about this before booking, because hotels won’t like being surprised if you show up with an unexpected third child at check-in. If you have a family of five, I’d email or call the hotel before transferring any points or booking anything to ask if their family room can accommodate three children.

There are a few popular hotel options in Europe that I’m aware of that are bookable on points for four people—another one that immediately springs to mind is the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile. (At this property, the suite is basically two connecting rooms, but they book it as one suite.) Because these gems are so hard to find, you’ll definitely need to book well in advance.

Option Four: the Hyatt Family Plan rate

Hyatt currently lists 25 properties around the world where you can book one room on points or with money and then book the second room with money but at a 50% discount from the standard rate. This offer is generally referred to as the Hyatt Family Plan rate. 

The properties listed honor the Family Plan discount, and in theory that list is finite, but I’ve heard that other properties may also honor it if you ask about it, so it can’t hurt to inquire if you’re looking at a property that’s not on this list. 

You can’t get a 50% points discount on the second room; the 50% discount only works when you pay for the second room out of pocket (i.e., cash or credit card). The first room can be either be booked with points or out of pocket.

Properties that honor the Hyatt Family Plan rate:

• Europe
  • Hyatt House London Stratford (UK)
  • Hyatt Regency London Stratford (UK)
  • Andaz London Liverpool Street (UK)
  • Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill (UK)
  • Great Scotland Yard Hotel London (UK)
  • Hyatt Regency Manchester (UK)
  • Hyatt Regency Birmingham (UK)
  • Hyatt Centric The Liberties Dublin (Ireland)
  • Hôtel du Louvre (France)
  • Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile (France)
  • Hôtel Martinez (France)
  • Hôtel du Palais Biarritz (France)
  • La Zambra Resort (Spain)
  • Hyatt Regency Hesperia Madrid (Spain)
  • Hyatt Regency Barcelona Tower (Spain)
  • Andaz Prague (Czechia)
  • Park Hyatt Zurich (Switzerland)
  • The Tribune (Italy)
  • Andaz Vienna am Belvedere (Austria)
  • Park Hyatt Vienna (Austria)
• Asia
  • Grand Hyatt Dubai (UAE)
  • Grand Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel & Residences Emirates Pearl (UAE)
  • Hyatt Regency Amritsar (India)
  • Alila Diwa Goa (India)
• Africa
  • Hyatt Regency Cairo West (Egypt)

One place we’ve booked a second room for our family of four was the Andaz London Liverpool Street, which is a great property in the City of London just steps away from the Liverpool Street Tube & train station.  We propped open the adjoining doors and kept an eye on the kids and it worked great. 

How to book using the Hyatt Family Plan rate

To book two rooms using the Hyatt Family Plan, you’ll need to call Hyatt’s customer service number (or message your Hyatt Globalist concierge if you’re a Globalist). When you book, make sure you mention that you will need adjoining rooms if your kids are young enough that you want to be able to keep the doors propped open to make one big suite. 

My take on booking lodging abroad as a family of four or more

It can be trickier than you might expect to book hotel rooms outside of the US that will actually allow four or more people in a room without paying double the price for two rooms. But don’t let that derail your travel dreams! Think about booking flat rentals, family rooms, family suites, or look into the Hyatt Family Plan discount and use your miles and points for the airfare that will get you there.