30 amazing family holidays for 2021
Of all the things that have been damaged in the past 10 months, it is the shrinking of the concept of “family” that many have found the most upsetting. What existed, a short while ago, as a frequent mingling of ages and generations, has, in plenty of cases, been reduced to Zoom windows and remote conversations. The babble of children with grandparents, the catching up with siblings, reminiscences with relatives – much has been boxed up and pushed into a virtual world that feels a wan substitute for normality.
The upside of this is that, when restrictions finally lift, the sense of reunion, and the joy of it all, will be inescapable. There will be tears, there will be parties and there will be travel, as families make up for lost time with days and weeks together in the sunshine. When you have spent a year mostly cooped up inside, the horizon will look more alluring than ever.
When? That is the thornier question. Not right away, certainly, with the virus still dogging our heels and pandemic travel restrictions closing off holidays until the spring at least. But with the vaccine rollout picking up pace, the gloom should disperse as 2021 forges a better path than its predecessor. Many of those paths will lead to the beach.
1. Forest fun
Hankering for a back-to-nature way of life – as many of us do these days – James Lynch and Sian Tucker, plus four children, upped sticks from Shoreditch to a farm in west Wales and created Fforest: a creative, grass-rootsy community built with an artist’s aesthetic and upcycled farm materials. Guests sleep in sculptural wooden shacks, onsen domes around a bath house, or the Scandi-rustic 14-bed farmhouse. Everything is hyperlocal, from the own-design Welsh wool blankets to the fish grilled at sociable barbecues. Kids go feral and have the time of their lives, making forest dens, wood carving, coasteering, shooting bows and arrows and roasting marshmallows over fires. There’s a coastal site, too; Manorafon Camp near Penbryn beach.
For 2021, the fun starts with four-night stays for four from £525 (coldatnight.co.uk).
2. Transylvania on two wheels
Set up by a man who cycled from England to Australia, The Slow Cyclist champions languid travel, offering a sustainable way to discover Rwanda, Transylvania and Greece through a network of local people. Founder Oli Broom describes the Transylvania trip as “absolute magic for families”, taking cyclists through one of Europe’s last wildernesses, staying at medieval mansions or restored village houses. The six-day trip is suitable for anyone from 11-year-olds to grandparents – electric bikes are available and the rides can be shortened (or lengthened) to suit ability.
From £1,895pp; theslowcyclist.co.uk.
3. Sound idea
After a year of being grounded, many are looking to make the most of their 2021 holiday with a bucket-list blowout. Cue the Vancouver Wilderness Family Explorer, Abercrombie & Kent’s eye-opening eight-day trip on an epic scale, flying into Vancouver Island by seaplane to stay at Clayoquot Wilderness Resort – a scattering of luxury tented lodges that kids will adore, set on the edge of pine-forested hills above the Pacific Ocean and surrounded by a towering landscape. It’s a digital detox en famille; go horse riding, walking, mountain biking, rock climbing, surfing, fishing, canoeing, with expert guides, and look for whales and bears.
From £5,425pp; abercrombiekent.co.uk.
4. Grylls just wanna have fun
Sani Resort is the original chic Greek family-friendly bolthole. The five-hotel property in Halkidiki encompasses almost 1,000 acres and a string of beaches, which you can zip around by golf buggy, plus 40-odd restaurants and bars, spacious pool villas, and full-throttle facilities including a zip-line adventure park, water park, and academies of tennis, biking, diving, football, sailing and water skiing. Joining those in 2021 is a Bear Grylls Survival Academy: guided survival expeditions through the resort’s woods, building rafts, shelters and fires, and catching food in the (relative) wild – for teenagers, or as a family.
Rooms from €166 (£149); Bear Grylls Survival Academy from €40pp per day (saniresort.com).
5. It’s not just cricket
Sri Lanka’s popularity has been growing steadily since it became safe to return, and it’s a brilliant option for families looking for exotic but easy-going (and affordable) adventures, from jungle to beach. Yonder’s new 14-day Family Holiday to Sri Lanka travels to offbeat parts of the country, with a journey by train, as well as cycling through paddy fields, meeting indigenous people, surfing and learning how to be a park ranger.
From £2,900pp; yonder.co.uk.
6. Heaven in Devon
To keep up with soaring demand for staycations, UK rental companies are adding ever-more-interesting properties to their books. In Devon’s glorious South Hams, the Lost Music Hall is newly available to rent through Unique Homestays. It’s perfect for summer, with an outdoor pool, firepit and extensive gardens for games, and some of Britain’s most beautiful beaches nearby. Inside, the open-plan spaces sing “party”, with fun-time extras such as table tennis, an antique organ and day beds for sleepovers.
From £1,350 for a four-night stay (uniquehomestays.com).
7. Le great outdoors
The French know how to camp. Not for them the pop-up tent in a miserable field. Huttopia brings cabins, roulottes and safari tents to some of France’s loveliest campsites, beside beaches, lakes and forests. Throw in swimming pools, airstream bars with live music, and plenty of other children to make friends with – et voila! Bonnes vacances all round. Five new sites were added last year, including one on the Côte d’Azur, making a French Riviera holiday in August very affordable. Meanwhile, Le French Time features dozens of luxury Les Castels campsites, with pitches in the grounds of chateaux, along with pools, decent places to eat and bouncy castles.
Two-bedroom safari tents with bathrooms from about £400 per week (huttopia.com). Pitches from £70 for a week (lefrenchtime.co.uk).
8. Patagonian adventure
This February, Explora’s long-awaited El Chatén lodge opens on a private nature reserve in Argentinian Patagonia. The lodge is Bond villain lair-contemporary, low-lying across the valley floor between the snow-capped peaks of the Andes. Interiors are pared down, with no televisions to detract from the mountain views. Explora is big on outdoorsy activities – horse riding, biking, walking – in the vast, remote landscape, done in small groups (great for single parents) or exclusively as a family. Until September 2021, there is up to 50 per cent off for families, too.
From $693 (£518) pp, all-inclusive; explora.com.
9. Oughta think Mallorca
In 2021, Italian holiday specialist The Thinking Traveller is branching out for the first time to Mallorca, with which founders Huw and Rossella Beaugié fell in love on family holidays. Its new collection of reliably gorgeous villas ranges from Seaside Cottage, a beautifully designed three-bedroom house beside a sandy cove in the north-east of the island, to spectacular five-bedroom Sa Vista, on a headland above Deia. It’s spot on for those multi-gen get-togethers we have been waiting for, as it has lots of space indoors and out, a large pool and gorgeous gardens, plus services on tap. Restaurants and shops in nearby Deia are a draw, too.
Seaside Cottage from €3,460 a week for four; Sa Vista from €34,110 a week for 10 (thethinkingtraveller.com).
10. Eco Rica
Costa Rica’s mix of jungle and two coasts (one turquoise Caribbean, one Pacific surf), along with its progressive sustainability ethos and safe infrastructure, makes it a must for nature-lovers and for families. In 2021, the country celebrates 200 years of independence, and tour operators are offering a raft of new family trips, incorporating eco-lodge stays and wildlife experiences. The mother of them all is Black Tomato’s luxury Costa Rica itinerary, great for multi-generational groups; travelling from volcanoes to rainforest to coast, guests discover the country through its locals: sloth-rescuing biologists, indigenous people in the mountains, and an organic farmer who shares his vision for sustainable living.
£6,750pp for a nine-night tour; blacktomato.com.
11. Highland flings
There are hundreds of bothies scattered around Scotland – most of them simple stone huts built to shelter souls out in the wilderness overnight. If your orienteering skills are up to it, try bothy hopping, hiking from hut to hut – an adventure to test your teens, who will probably moan but may, after a couple of days spent wild swimming, stargazing and walking in breathtaking landscapes, begrudgingly enjoy themselves. At the other extreme, Black Tomato’s new Get Lost experience helicopters adventurers into remote parts of the Highlands, with activities led by SAS soldiers by day and five-star luxury by night.
Bothies free; plan your route at mountainbothies.org.uk. Get Lost £15,000pp; blacktomato.com/get-lost.
12. Seaside chic
Comporta, a chichi beach spot just south of Lisbon, is where Europe’s style set holiday in architect-designed villas among the pines. But it’s also heaven for families, with its easy-breezy vibe and white-sand beaches, and a great array of houses to take over (lecollectionist.com has an amazing selection, ranging from rustic luxe to all-out glam). Party too small for a villa? Quinta da Comporta, a recent hotel on the scene, is quietly elegant but still welcoming for children, and as well as rooms is adding a few new houses.
Rooms from €235 a night; three-bed pool villa from €900 (quintadacomporta.com).
13. So cool in Alaska
National Geographic has teamed up with adventure tour operator G Adventures to create a handful of small-group Family Journeys (suitable for children over seven). Knowledgeable guides pique interest, bringing learning to life and revealing the world’s wonders, big and small. Their first set of trips includes the 10-day bucket-list classic Peru Family Journey: from Machu Picchu to the Amazon; and the adventurous nine-day Alaska Family Journey: walking and wildlife-spotting on a grand scale, dog sledding across a glacier and sailing around Kenai Fjords, where humpback whales and orcas breach.
Peru from £1,999pp (adults); Alaska from £3,099pp (gadventures.com).
14. Channel Island idyll
You’d be hard-pushed to find an island better suited to a timeless beach break than Alderney. It is small enough to walk and cycle around (and let older kids loose), with enough beaches for every day of the week; it has ruined forts to explore, an old Bakerloo Line train pootling along the coast, and outdoor parties in August. There are great places to eat and drink, too. The new Blonde Hedgehog boutique hotel recently opened the three-bedroom Corner House, which sleeps six. The Landmark Trust’s Fort Clonque sleeps 13 on its own island.
Corner House from £400 per night B&B (blondehedgehog.com). Fort Clonque from £812 for four nights (landmarktrust.org.uk).
15. Go go Tokyo
If you ever needed a reason to visit Japan, Wild Frontiers’ new two-week Japan Family Trip makes for a compelling one. It teaches children ninja arts and samurai sword fighting, and other exciting activities include guided walks around Tokyo’s alleyways, cycling around the temples of Kyoto, and kayaking around Miyajima Island.
From £3,545pp, excluding flights (wildfrontierstravel.com).
16. Iceland Way
Iceland is a great destination for outdoorsy families, with lots of wildlife-watching experiences and dramatic landscapes to explore – volcanoes to climb, warm thermal pools to swim in, ice caves and canyons and mountains to hike. It is more accessible after the country opened two new routes for visitors in 2020: the Westfjords Way and the Diamond Circle. Discover the World offers various Iceland trips suitable for children, from the classic Family Explorer the Icelandic Way, a nine-night self-drive staying in self-catering cottages, to the week-long Family Diamond Circle Drive taking in the new route.
Family Explorer from £839pp in July/Aug). Circle Drive from £1,340pp (discover-the-world.com).
17. Extraordinary Galapagos
Launching this April, the eight-night Island Hopping in the Galapagos is Journey Latin America’s new luxury “bubble holiday”. Private yachts and light-aircraft transfers whisk travellers around the islands’ little-seen spots, inaccessible to cruise passengers, from the rim of the active Sierra Negra volcano to secret bays on Santa Cruz. Local experts enable close encounters with the archipelago’s extraordinary wildlife, so that children can experience the wonders they watched on the Attenborough series for themselves.
From £7,864pp, including flights (journeylatinamerica.co.uk).
18. Croatia with kids
New holiday company Two Point Four, which was set up last year to cater specifically for families with very small children, has a host of itineraries for 2021. Its tailored Croatia trip takes families swimming in waterfalls and lakes in Krka National Park, gorge hiking and overnighting in log cabins beside Plitvice Lakes. Activities include treasure hunts and sandcastle-building, and on-tap childcare means parents can take time out for spa treatments, yoga and cookery classes – and in the evenings choose between dining en famille or child-free.
From £1,745 per adult; £895 per child, including seven nights’ accommodation, transfers, activities and childcare (twopointfourtravel.com).
19. Safari plus
Lepogo Lodge’s stylish Noka Camp in South Africa, opened a year ago, is sustainable, zero-footprint and not-for-profit. Recently, it started hosting a programme of cultural activities for children to complement safaris: treasure hunts, baking, pottery, jewellery making and painting; boating, fishing and swimming in the Palala river; and trips to an Iron Age site in the mountains.
From R16,500 (£732)pp per night, all-inclusive (lepogolodges.com).
20. Maldives magic
The thatched overwater villas at Gili Lankanfushi were the first in the Maldives, and some of the most sustainable. That ethos endures, and now the resort has launched a five-night educational escape package for families with teenagers, who can scuba dive, learn to identify marine life with Gili’s resident marine biologists, and spend three days working on the Coral Lines conservation project, helping with coral reef recovery and learning about the preservation of our magical underwater world.
$15,325 for five nights’ all-inclusive for four (gili-lankanfushi.com).
21. Umbrian hills
The rolling hills of Umbria are easier to reach this year, thanks to new BA flights direct to Perugia, the region’s ancient capital. Umbria’s historic buildings-turned-holiday rentals are ideal for families seeking space and distance. Borgo Bastia Creti is a hamlet of five restored houses, while at Tenuta di Murlo (murlo.com), owners Carlotta and Alessio have spent the past decade transforming the ruins on their estate into very desirable villas.
The region’s knockout newcomer is Reschio, a family-run estate of farm buildings available to buy and rent near the Tuscan border with a 1,000-year-old castle that has now been renovated and opened as a hotel. There is no need to leave the 3,700-acre grounds: take cookery classes, go cycling or horse riding, fishing or paddleboarding on the lake, or foraging with the in-house expert among the wild-flower meadows and oak forest.
Borgo Bastia Creti two-bedroom house from €400 per night or €2,100 per week (bastiacreti.it). Reschio from €680 per night B&B; three-bedroom houses from €14,000 per week (reschio.com).
22. Middle Eastern promise
Dubai increasingly appeals to families. Teenagers tend to be impressed by the gold-plating and world records (tallest towers, most expensive suite, biggest Ferris wheel – Ain Dubai, opening this year); and little ones love the theme parks, Legoland Dubai and Legoland Water Park among them. Also opening is the statement-design Museum of the Future, with interactive exhibits bringing together inventions, design, ideas and tech.
Trailfinders can arrange a week’s Dubai Family Adventure, staying at Atlantis, the Palm and including a four-wheel-drive desert adventure plus Legoland Water Park among other activities, from £990pp (trailfinders.com).
23. Natural highs in Norway
62º Nord is a Norwegian experiential travel company with a handful of boutique hotels (one so boutique it’s just a three-bedroom cabin on its own tiny island) that arranges out-of-the-ordinary trips in Norway’s epic outdoors. The trips loop around via three of 62º Nord’s hotels, with walks in the mountains, kayaking trips across pristine fjords, survival skills lessons and a new out-in-the-wild camping experience for 2021.
All trips bespoke; 62.no.
24. Trees company
Set amid forest in Hampshire’s Test Valley, on the Fullerton Estate, is a new clutch of treehouses sustainably designed and hand-built by woodsy Will Hardie (of Channel 4’s Amazing Spaces), shed architect extraordinaire. Of the four treehouses, Poppy and Perigord are designed for families of four (plus dog), and have bunk rooms for children; parents get outdoor zinc bathtubs and bottles of the estate’s own award-winning Black Chalk wine.
Treehouse for four from £320 (canopyandstars.co.uk).
25. Game on
Football Escapes is a coaching course, the difference being that the coaches are Premier League level, and the players who drop by to join in and give tips include Rio Ferdinand, Jamie Redknapp and Ashley Cole. Kids love it. Professional training brings their game on, whether they want a career or just to shine in the playground. This year, the five-day courses take place in family-friendly hotels around the world, from the Grove in Hertfordshire and Elounda Bay Palace in Crete to Marbella’s new Ikos Andalusia.
Football Escapes offers seven nights’ B&B at Elounda Bay Palace, from £3,250 per family, including flights and a place on the five-day course (footballescapes.com).
26. Eco-warriors in Kenya
The pandemic has all but halted safaris in Africa, and the loss of funding from tourism has severely affected conservation and anti-poaching efforts across the continent. So, by booking a safari trip to responsible and sustainable outfits, travellers are helping wildlife as well as local communities. Kenya is a great option for family safaris, says Expert Africa’s Richard Trillo, whose insider tip for an affordable safari break in 2021 is a few days at Il Ngwesi eco-lodge, north of the Lewa Conservancy, then a few days at family-friendly Pinewood Beach Resort on the coast. Il Ngwesi is run by an all-local Maasai team; and both children and adults (including William and Kate) love the six fantastical treehouse bandas.
Expert Africa can arrange an eight-night trip for around £3,000pp, all-inclusive (expertafrica.com)
27. Mini monarchs of the glen
Kick off the excitement by taking the recently revamped Caledonian Sleeper direct from London to Gleneagles station (Classic rooms from £195; sleeper.scot). The hotel is renowned for its golf, spa and Michelin-starred restaurant but is also one of the UK’s best all-out-luxury family resorts, with brilliantly designed games rooms, ride-on toy train, miniature Land Rovers to drive and Shetland ponies to ride. In some school holidays, Scott Dunn’s Explorers kids’ club pops up, adding dragon hunts, tennis lessons, tree climbing, clay pigeon shooting and off-roading on Argocats to the mix.
From £5,500 for a family for five nights’ B&B with two kids’ club places (gleneagles.com).
28. Greece (and Cyprus) is the word
Greece is fast becoming the world’s go-to destination for luxury family resorts. Classic favourites (such as Peligoni Club, Sani and Daios Cove) are being joined by newcomers every year. Opening this April in Parga is the MarBella Elix, designed for families with a teenagers’ adventure club plus a host of activities to do together; Crete’s new Cayo resort offers a child-friendly experience; while Cyprus’s recently opened Amara combines high-end luxury, fine dining (including restaurants by Nobu and Locatelli) and a fab spa, with a family-friendly outlook, a kids’ club and various pools at the beachfront site.
Rooms at Amara from €398 (amarahotel.com).
29. Scilly season
Tresco, the smartest of the Scilly Isles, is made for multi-generational holidays. It is privately owned and car-free, neatly groomed from its heather-covered hilltop to its semi-tropical gardens – great for grandparents seeking a tranquil escape – and its beaches really are the stuff of legend: glittering white sand, Caribbean-turquoise shallows, and few people. New to the estate’s collection of cottages and New England-style beach houses is the four-ensuite-bedroom Lighthouse Cottage, set beside the sand.
Sleeps 10, from £2,000 a week (tresco.co.uk).
30. Namibia road trip
Tour operator Families Worldwide has a new 13-night self-drive safari holiday in Namibia for 2021, meaning that adventurers can travel from the vast dunes of the Namib Desert and the Skeleton Coast to Etosha National Park, looking out for the Big Five. The journey ends at Okonjima private reserve, staying with the AfriCat Foundation and learning all about their conservation programmes.
From £1,895 per adult; £1,295 child, excluding flights (familiesworldwide.co.uk).
