When getting ready to travel with small children, parents ask themselves, hotel vs. vacation rentals? Some families love the ease and convenience of hotels/resorts while others prefer the more home-like experience of a vacation rental property, but overall, neither are meeting the needs of families traveling with babies and small children. Safety, cleanliness and availability of baby gear at hotels and vacation rental properties is subpar at best.
As the #1 baby gear rental service providing traveling families with thousands of baby gear items, our goal with this survey was to better understand if hotels and vacation rental properties are able to accommodate our demographic (families traveling with babies and small children under age 4), and how we can make adjustments and form strategic partnerships to make the act of family travel easier by providing gear at these locations.
We polled our customers and contacts in two separate surveys (with a total of 1620 respondents) about their family travel preferences and what they’ve experienced in regards to the baby gear/equipment/essentials available at their travel accommodations.
So, do hotels and resorts meet the needs of equipment safety, cleanliness and availability? The short answer is NO! Read on for our detailed findings:
Transporting baby gear is an overall family travel deterrent
We weren’t surprised to learn that when we combined our two survey results, that on average, 79% of families said they would take more vacations if they didn’t have to transport all of their baby equipment. 87% also said hauling gear impacts their desire to travel.
This is understandable, as some items are big, bulky and take up valuable luggage space while other items just aren’t practical to bring on a trip—like a full-size crib or a jumperoo. That’s where BabyQuip comes in and saves the day! We consistently exceed safety standards and cleanliness expectations, unlike hotels and vacation rentals.
Where do families prefer to stay
A large percentage (85%) of families have stayed in a vacation rental property at some point during a family vacation and 66% prefer booking a vacation rental over a hotel.
We attribute this to the more home-like feel it creates. We’ve worked with sleep consultants over the years and have learned that the more you can recreate the comforts of home, the more likely your baby is to sleep well in an unfamiliar environment. And since vacation is for relaxing and recharging, if you can’t get the rest you need and want, it can seem like a waste.
Regardless of where families choose to stay most often, a whopping 96% said they would switch and be more likely to stay at whatever location (hotel or VR) provided clean and safe baby gear.
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- 20 Coronavirus Travel Tips to Keep Your Family Safe
Hotels vs. Vacation Rentals
Our two surveys were sent to parents/grandparents of small children under the age of four which resulted in over 1600 total responses.
896 people responded to our Family Travel Preferences survey specifically asking about their hotel/resort experiences and 724 people responded to our Family Travel Preferences survey specifically asking about staying at vacation rental properties.
Desire to travel
How much does packing and hauling baby gear impact a family’s desire to travel? We found out that about one third of the respondents, regardless of preferring to stay in hotels or VRs, said it ‘greatly impacts’ their desire to travel and almost two-thirds of the respondents said that while it impacts their desire, it’s still doable to travel and haul baby gear.
In 2016, Skift reported that families spend $150 billion on travel annually. As a company serving traveling families on a daily basis, we want to capture as many of them as possible. There is a large untapped market based on the difficulty traveling and packing for babies brings.
Ultimately, families don’t want to haul baby gear with them on vacation and BabyQuip is the obvious choice and solution.
Equipment Safety
On top of how clean the items were, we wanted to learn how safe the gear available at hotels and vacation rentals was. As you can see most items are just passable and dated at best. In previous surveys, BabyQuip has always exceeded safety standards. In fact, 99% of our customers say that the gear they rented was safe.
We took this question one step further and asked when equipment was available, what the condition the respondent expected it to be in. Over 40% expected the gear to be ‘new, safe and exactly what I’d pick’. As you can see from the results the majority of the people are being let down by the available baby gear at hotels and vacation rentals.
Equipment Cleanliness
We found that the most common items hotels offer in terms of baby equipment are cribs and/or pack ‘n plays and when we asked how clean they were only 8% of the respondents said the items were ‘sparkling clean’. All others rated the available items ‘visibly dirty’ (3%), ‘a little grimy’ (6%), ‘not great but not terrible’ (35%), and ‘clean-ish’ (48%).
Of the people that answered how clean the available baby equipment was at a vacation rental property, 16% said it was ‘sparkling clean’—twice as clean as hotels. ‘Clean-ish’ ranked about the same hotels at 50%, while ‘visibly dirty’ (2%) and ‘a little grimy’ (9%) were also about the same. ‘Not great but not terrible’ came in at about 24% which was half of the hotel responses.
At BabyQuip we pride ourselves on safety and cleanliness making us an easy and obvious choice for families instead of relying on gear provided at their destinations whether it be a hotel or a vacation rental. 96% of our customers say the gear they rent from us is spotless or very clean.
Equipment Availability
We asked if families typically call ahead to find out if a hotel or a vacation rental has the gear/equipment they need for their baby/child. We were surprised to learn that 63% of hotel respondents said ‘yes’, they called ahead, but only 40% of those staying in vacation rentals do.
44% of VR respondents also said they assume the property will not have what they need so they don’t bother calling ahead to find out, however, only 21% of hotel respondents assume the property won’t have baby gear available. While hotels are known to have a limited quantity of items (like cribs and/or pack ‘n plays), they are rarely guaranteed.
BabyQuip literally has thousands of baby gear items for rent on our website. 800 providers across the US, Canada (and beyond) in 600 locations, make us easy to find at almost any vacation destination.
Equipment Offerings
Between the two surveys, 94% of families said they wish hotels and vacation rental properties offered baby equipment for their use.
The top three items that families staying at hotels would like to have available are full size cribs, high chairs, and strollers. And the top three items for those choosing VRs are high chairs, full size cribs and pack ‘n plays. With two of these items in the VR survey being sleep aids, this reinforces the previous statement that babies sleep better in familiar home-like environments.
Summary
Overall, our findings suggest that traveling families are unsatisfied with their experiences with baby gear safety, cleanliness and availability at hotels/resorts AND at vacation rentals.
We are working to raise awareness of baby gear rentals and form necessary partnerships so more families can rent clean and safe baby equipment wherever their travels may take them.
Jennifer leads the marketing efforts at BabyQuip and is constantly trying to reinvent awesomeness through written copy, visual appeal, creative content & SEO. Jennifer is a mom of two boys and knows first hand the struggles of traveling with babies, toddlers and kids. When Jennifer’s head isn’t swimming with new marketing ideas you’ll find her tending to her backyard chickens and practicing meditation.
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