With fall upon us, you may have resigned yourself to not seeing the hot sunshine for a good few months. While the fall season has loads of great things about it, from watching the leaves change and cozying up as the weather turns colder to decorating for Halloween, once fall is over the winter chill can seem very long and it can be easy to become tired of short days, and having to wrap up warm for every trip outside.
If you aren’t a fan of the long winter, especially that period after the holidays are over when spring seems so far away, then a very good remedy can be to plan a winter sun vacation. In many ways, this can be better than taking your main family vacation in summer. Here, we look at why:
Everything Is Cheaper
If you head to somewhere close to the equator with year round sunshine, like the Caribbean, you can get all the beach time, outdoor activity and sunshine you’d get on a summer vacation but can end up spending far less. This is because you are traveling outside of peak travel times, when flights and accommodation cost less. However, what you can also factor in is that even the things you will buy to take with you cost less out of season. While it may be harder to find your beachwear like the perfect tankini bathing suit in stores outside of summer, online you will find amazing discounts on this kind of thing, for both you and your kids. If your children aren’t in school yet, you can travel any time you like during the winter for even better discounts, though even if you are limited to school vacation times, when costs for accommodation and travel are higher, you’ll still spend far less in total on a family vacation than in summer.
Things Are Less Frantic
If you have very young kids or babies to travel with, you may well appreciate that things both at airports and resorts will be a lot less frantic and stressful in the winter than they are during the peak summer vacation time. This can mean a lot of things, from better service when you are there due to the staff in hotels, restaurants and attractions having less people to contend with, to an easier time checking in for flights. Flights to vacation destinations are less likely to be oversold in the winter season too, so you have less risk of ending up on standby.
Get More from Your Home Town In Summer
If you can’t afford two family vacations in a year, then taking your vacation in winter means staying where you are all summer. This can be better, though, because you can enjoy the full summer season where you live, with all the good weather and extra events, and still get a bonus week or two of ‘summer’ when you really crave it in the cold months. Alternatively, you can take a cheaper vacation just to visit relatives or friends in summer, and keep your vacation budget for exotic winter travel.
See More of the World
Many American families who take their vacations in summer don’t stray outside of the US – there are so many interesting places to explore that getting a passport and traveling just doesn’t seem worth it. However, outside of summer when most places in the US don’t have beach friendly weather, you need to look further south for sun. There are lots of affordable places to get to with a fairly short flight, and this not only allows you to get the benefits of the climate somewhere different but also to experience a different culture and cuisine. Travel can be an amazing learning experience for kids, whether it is meeting people from other countries or seeing the different wildlife places like South America and the Caribbean have to offer, and so having a winter vacation somewhere outside of your own country can be really beneficial for them, as well as fun. Yes, you will have to get passports, but it is well worth it for the years of foreign travel that these open you up to.
Traveling for a winter sun vacation offers so many benefits over going with everyone else in August or July. You can save money, get more sunny weeks in your year, experience different things, and beat the winter blues, as well as having a less stressful time overall!
