Child-free travel ideas for blissful getaways

Modern life is often busy, making it hard to coordinate time with your chosen family, as anyone who’s had to mute a group chat knows. While planning a getaway with loved ones can be challenging, securing group accommodation that combines a sense of togetherness with enough space for everyone can be a great starting point, leaving the rest of your time for researching and booking local experiences. To inspire your next trip, four Booking.com employees share insights from the child-free holidays they’ll be reminiscing about for years to come.

When Erico Santos had the opportunity to introduce five friends – a diverse group of his Booking.com coworkers – to the culture of his native Brazil, the volcanic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha made a paradisiacal choice. Here, island living invites a renowned scuba-diving scene, world-class beaches like Sancho Bay, plentiful wildlife – including dolphins – and a laid-back lifestyle.

Erico writes: ‘The dives were the main activity we planned for, and they did not disappoint… Big turtles and rays were common. We also saw many, many fish from the local reefs, such as big barracudas, red snappers, jacks, surgeons, parrot fish, box fish, flying fish, moray eels, lobsters, reef and nurse sharks.’

The group stayed in a colourful guest house surrounded by lush vegetation. Erico warns that Fernando de Noronha’s dining scene can be pricey, so if you’re looking to budget, consider alternating meals out with home cooking and book self-catering accommodation. The joyfully turquoise Noronha Dreams flat offers plenty of space, with a large wooden balcony beckoning you to muddle up a tray of Brazilian caipirinhas for a balmy ‘happy hour’ overlooking the private garden.

Reflecting on his experience, Erico adds: ‘I learned that Brazil is richer than I usually take for granted. And also learned that it’s not so different from the rest of the world after all, given how my friends, so many times, felt heart-warmingly at home.’

Lois Robertson travelled to Bali for her cousin’s destination wedding and stayed on afterwards with a large group of other guests, many of whom didn’t know each other. Their expeditions took them from Uluwatu to Ubud, and finally, to Canggu, and booking accommodation with a balance of social spots and privacy was a priority.

Having beautiful dining areas was equally important, as finding restaurants with sufficient space that everyone could agree on may have been – character-building. One home the group stayed in was the lavish Villa Santa Monica near Monkey Forest. Rising out of the Ubud jungle, this multi-level, contemporary property features six large bedrooms, several communal areas and a tube slide to propel you into the pool.

A jam-packed itinerary saw Lois and her newfound friends surfing, river tubing, bashing through the jungle in an ATV and luxuriating at beach clubs like Canna Bali. If you’re up for an early start, a sunrise trek, like Lois’s crew tried, will reward your efforts with the spectacular colours of daybreak at the top of Mount Batur, complete with breakfast eggs cooked in one of the active volcano’s steam craters. Or, if you’re craving adventure, you could splash out on a private snorkelling tour to the island utopia of Nusa Penida.

Lois’s top travel tip for Indonesia is to finalise your flight bookings during a weekday and also to book weekday flights, as both of these can result in significantly cheaper prices.

Many of Manchester-based Anna Jones’s closest friends still live in the UK, but they are spread out across the country. With this in mind, the group decided on a staycation that each member could reach by car. Says Anna: ‘[It’s] difficult to arrange group trips, as everyone is on a tight timescale and has their own budgets. It feels like you’re looking for a unicorn trying to please everyone.’

Provided that nobody would need to drive for too many hours, the friends didn’t have any specific location in mind and instead made finding a dream home the deciding factor. After using Booking.com’s on-site map to narrow the search area and filter by budget, the cathedral city of Lincoln in England’s East Midlands produced the winner: a home with enough rooms for everybody and the friends’ must-have – a hot tub.

Anna recommends filtering the search by the number of bedrooms so that nobody has to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room – a setup that’s one of her pet peeves: ‘You have nowhere to put your stuff, you have to stay up, and everyone’s hanging out in your bedroom.’ If you’re planning your own Lincoln trip, you can check out a similar property – this historic brick home with a terrace, private parking and a large, manicured garden out in the countryside. 

The group made the most of their three days together, going for rambles in the countryside, testing their wits at an escape room, visiting Lincoln Cathedral and making a trip to Lincoln Castle, where they viewed one of the original copies of the Magna Carta, sealed there by King John in 1215. They also treated themselves to dinner cooked by a private chef at home.

For their three-day holiday, Supriya Bohra and her university friends decided to bring their childhood dreams to life and experience the magic of Disneyland Paris. Being based at Booking.com’s Netherlands HQ meant that Supriya could take the Eurostar train from Amsterdam Centraal directly to Paris in approx. four hours. The group booked a homestay at Disney Skyline Suite, just 15 minutes away from the park by local train, with their sole daily transportation spend being a two-way ticket.

Although Supriya is not a fan of thrill rides, she braved the rollercoasters with her friends, which made for a fun souvenir: ‘The pictures where everyone is exhilarated while I am petrified for my life will always be hilarious’. Supriya’s favourite attraction was Ratatouille – The Adventure 4D ride, while her adrenaline-loving friends recommend The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror and Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain.

For the group’s breakfasts, a visit to a local bakery provided the option of indulging in buttery French pastries before a busy day in the park. Disneyland Paris offers dozens of themed restaurants, bars and on-the-go snack stalls inside the park to cater to all tastes and preferences, but Supriya confirms that the famous Mickey ice cream bar is a must-try. The group also made time for one splurge meal: lunch at the opulent Le Train Bleu at Gare de Lyon before their return journey.

With the park delivering more attractions than can be covered in three days, Supriya’s top Disneyland travel tip is to adopt a flexible itinerary that covers everyone’s needs and to allow people to venture off alone if there’s something they particularly want to do.