It’s clear many families are now looking to RVs as a travel option. The overwhelming majority (77%) of U.S. parents have taken their families on a trip in the past three years.
Just see the Family Travel Poll Results, which showed most respondents’ dream family vacation is RVing around the U.S.
There are some clear advantages to RVing versus using traditional transportation and accommodations in your family vacations:
- Save on your room. While this isn’t always the case (renting an RV can cost upwards of $1,000 weekly), for large families that require adjoining rooms, you can quickly save some dollars.
- Take it home with you. What is nice about an RV is it is a home in miniature and on wheels. Kids like to have the rituals and items of their homes. It makes them sleep better and feel more at ease. While hotel rooms (unless they are suites) are just beds, a bathroom, and a TV, an RV includes all the basic amenities of a home.
- Save on airfare. Even a nearby destination gets pricy when you must spring for, say, five or six tickets. Even with rising gas prices, getting there by RV will likely save you money versus flying if you have a large family.
- See more along the way. If you take an RV instead of flying, taking the bus, or riding the rails, you will get the chance to see more destinations and discover gems of little towns and attractions.
- You’ll meet more people. You rarely make friends in hotels, where everyone goes about their business. At RV parks, however, people see each other more outside, and it’s much more social. Your kids are much more likely to make young friends from playing.
- You can cook for yourself. Your kitchen will roll with you, so you can save a lot of money (and the stress of kids acting up at restaurants) by cooking your own meals.
- You can bring more. If you travel with kids, it can seem like the amount of gear, clothes, and random stuffed animals that simply must go along is endless. When you take an RV, you can take more. Still, you may want to keep packing under control.
- If you don’t like a town, you can leave it. I’ve arrived at plenty of destinations only to groan when I see the spot in person. The lovely thing about RVs is it is much easier to be flexible. Armed with a good book on RV sites, you can turn your nose up and move on (especially if you didn’t reserve a spot). Besides, you should always have a plan B.
There are also downsides, of course. You could pay about the same as a single hotel room stay, particularly if you add up RV rental costs, gas costs, and RV park fees. Even so, there are plenty of intangible benefits to RV travel with kids that could counteract that.
