Children in Hotels

 We have been spending some time at hotels and have noticed quite a few children are travelling with their parents, which is great. The one thing that did come to my attention is how parents and children interact while at hotels.

Here are some examples of what we have seen: 

1. Children playing in the breakfast areas. Parents are travelling with other families and the kids are left to entertain themselves in the breakfast areas. We arrived in the breakfast area to find four kids running around and crawling around the seating area. This made it dangerous for other people to be walking around because you never knew if you were doing to be tripping over a child or having a child run into you. The parents didn’t seem to care that the children were running around and possibly causing issues. It is always nice to get more than one family travelling together, but the parents also need to make sure that they are paying some attention to the children as well.

2. Children sitting and playing in the halls of a hotel. Here is something that does bother me because the children have a room that they are from and if the children are from multiple rooms, why can’t they all go into one of the rooms to play instead of playing in the halls and possibly disturbing other guests. Sure, the parents might be trying to get a younger child to bed or packing to leave the hotel, but the children shouldn’t be playing in the halls.

3. Children respecting the areas. Some children seem to be able to respect that they aren’t at home, and they are very well-behaved. It is always nice to see even very young children understand that they are out away from home, and they need to walk in the halls and not run, and they also have to respect others and not talk in a very loud voice. These are the children that make travelling good because it shows that they are learning about different places and also getting the experience of travelling.

I think it is very important that children can travel and see and learn about different places and experiences. I know that I travelled when I was younger and loved getting to see new places. Children need to experience other places, and they also must learn to understand that hotel halls and breakfast areas aren’t for playing in. I don’t expect children to be silent or anything like that, but parents need to help their children learn how to travel and be in the various places and respect other people as well.