family of 5 hotel frustrations

First of all, don't even consider trying to sneak your 11-year old in to sleep on the floor. Hotels will kick you out. You can ask about cots, but don't be surprised if they say no. I use booking.com a lot. Besides hotels and inns, they do list apartments and apartment hotels. You can check filters on their site so that you don't have to wade through unsuitable hotel listings. "Self-catering" is the all-purpose term that might be used. With three teenagers, an apartment is a good idea, anyway. More room, and you can keep snacks available. The other source you could look at is Alistair Sawday's specialplacestostay.com.

Are you using Booking.com? In the box next to Guests, click on the down arrow and select More Options. There you can put how many adults and how many children. After you put in the number of kids, you will get boxes to put in their ages at check-out.

You don't say where in Italy you are going and when. I tried an experiment with Florence and checked the "I don't have specific dates yet" box. 1 room, 2 adults, 3 children, 17, 15, 11. There is more filtering you can do on the left side of the results, but I didn't do that. FYI, when I do this for us, I ignore the stars and rely on the review score, requiring it to be 8 or higher. Then I sort the results by review score. You can choose the sort option for families if you like. For best results, you need to put in your actual dates and filter as you want. With 5 people, apartments will be common in the results.

We love staying in apartments, even though it's just the 2 of us. There's more room to spread out and we always have breakfast at "home" and sometimes dinner, too.

I have never booked through Booking.com. I've only used it to identify places and then gone directly to their websites, which I had to find using Google. Going directly to them and communicating directly with them, you may find more options than you see online. BTW, don't believe it when Booking.com says there are only X number rooms left. That's how many they have to sell, not how many are available at the lodging.

Based on other posters on the forum, you do not put the kid on the floor with blankets. You must have a bed of some sort for them. And don't even think about trying to sneak the 5 of you into a 4-person lodging. The facility will provide a cot if they will allow 5 adults, and you will likely be considered adults in terms of beds, even though your youngest is under 12.

Read the listings very carefully. Some will show 3-person and 2-person rooms, so if you all want to be in the same room, that may not work for you unless they are connected. In those 3/2 cases you would want to check with the lodging to be sure there is a connecting door.

There have been cases reported of people showing up with an "extra" person and not being allowed to stay because the number of people exceeded fire regulations. Not what you want to happen after a long travel day

I'd suggest that you contact hotels directly (by email) and explain your circumstances ( e.g. "We are a family of five, husband, wife, and children age 17, 15, and 11. Do you have a suitable room?". They may have a family room or be able to put you in two nearby rooms.

p.s. Do not ask for a cot. In British English, a "cot" is a baby's crib and in Europe, most people will assume this is what you are asking for.

There are also search engines such as www.airbnb.com that focus on apartment rentals. We stayed at a 2 bed/2bath apartment in Venice and it worked well for our group of 2 couples. A few things about apartments is that they often require 3+ night stays and can be more restrictive on check in times because they are not staffed 24 hours.

Have you considered hostels? I've seen some advertised with a 6 person room. May not have a private bath though.

Barb

Great information. Thanks so much! Just to clarify, we would never sneak our 11 year old in, but would offer to pay extra just for floor space so we could be together. Just got on booking.com (great site!) and have found many apartments, but I will most definitely do as one said and contact them directly. That's a really good tip, as is the one about the "cot." [My 11 year old would be mortified by them even bringing a crib into the room, even if it was my own mistake using that word! LOL!]

When you see quads listed in Rick's book, you cannot be sure of the bed configuration, only that there are four places. Many doubles in Europe are two twins put together, so they can be separated on request. Contacting those hotels directly is the only way to confirm what you need. Those described as large or "family apartment" may be more able to accommodate the extra bed request. In Florence, for example, consider the Oblate Sisters of the Assumption (p.530), Hotel la Scaletta (p. 535) or www.crosspollinate.com (p. 1181), a booking service which can help you locate apartments in Florence, Rome, and Venice.

It is super easy to find an apartment or villa to rent in Italy. Here are a few places where you can find a rental big enough for your whole family:
(1) Homeaway www.homeaway.com/vacation-rentals/italy/r39
(2) RentVillas http://italy.rentvillas.com
(3) VRBO www.vrbo.com/vacation-rentals/europe/italy
(4) TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.com/italy-villas.html
(5) Flip Key https://www.flipkey.com/italy-vacation-rentals/g187768/

Traveled to Italy three years ago with four adults and a child. Found the best accommodations via VRBO -- not only do you have sleeping space but room to socialize. They often have small kichen areas and washers as well which will save you money. Each unit added so much to our travel experience -- one overlooking a canal in Venice, a two-level converted 17th century home in the heart of Florence, and a two-level with a roof top terrace in Rome. Will be staying in an Amsterdam rental found on Trip Advisor next week.

When are you going and which cities?

Our family of five is travelling to Rome this summer. I contacted many many hotels last September and booked in October. There are quite a few hotels in Rome that can accommodate a family of five but many of them only have one room that can do so. And I found that most of these are not on the booking engines. I checked on booking.com and other similar websites for those with quads. I then checked their own websites and contacted them directly asking if they had a room that could accommodate a family of 5. I don't have the list with me right now but if it would help, I can look for it. The rooms are out there but you need to dig a bit to find them.

We family of 5 used to do hostels, (we try to get a private room together--some times having to pay for an 'empty' 6th bed) but we find that renting apartments is often times cheaper and better.

Having rented with both VRBO and Airnb, I prefer the latter because it's easier not to have to deal and negotiate with each 'landlord' for deposit, payment and etc... Some just wanted me to Paypal them half of the cost up front and I just wasn't comfortable with that. I also find the latter site much easier to navigate and more updated in terms of Calendar availability etc...

Airnb hosts tend to respond to my email enquiries regarding availability, whereas with VRBOs, I'm lucky if 1/5 respond (so it's a waste of my time).

I also think an apartment is your best bet. You can eat your breakfast and another meal in and save a lot of money that way. Go to TripAdvisor and just type in the cities you will be visiting and up will jump many, many apartments. The same will happen with Airbnb. I wish that these had been available when we took our 5 children to Italy years ago. Have someone help you if you don't know how to go about finding them. I'll bet your teens could help and that would get them involved in planning the trip also. We prefer staying in apartments just so we don't have to eat out all of the time and a lot of them also have washing machines.

For the most part we use HomeAway and rent houses in places. We do this over Xmas school break every year in Maui. The house we like only does 6, so if oldest daughter's (24 yrs old in Medical School now) boyfriend comes he sleeps with my son. This year we needed bigger as MIL & FIL and the boyfriend are coming. HomeAway worked out again. In the Grand Canyon we ended up with 2 rooms. Dad and son in one, then me and my two daughters in the other. Nothing available in the Canyon hotels allowed more than 4 per room and they had none of the larger suites available for more than 4 per room and this was almost a full year in advance (Cinque Terre is also like that a full year out to book what you want as an FYI). So home(villa)/apt. or double rooms may be your choices. Stinks, but it works.
Kath

Just returned with a family of 5. Rome, Florence, Munich and Berlin.
We spent the most time in Rome so used Holiday Lettings
http://www.holidaylettings.co.uk/italy/bookable-online/bedrooms.3/hom_home_type.apartment/?m=20454&supci=33548941&supag=14246058014&supsc=s&supai=47783078534&supap=1t1&supdv=c&supnt=g&suppm=&supap1=297503&supap2=%C2%A333
We also rented an apartment in London from them several years ago.
It takes some courage, but it is worth it!