The Benefits of Multigenerational Family Travel
Memories are Made Outside the Routine
The bonds we create with our children and grandchildren during their formative years have a lasting influence on our lifelong relationships. Most of that time is spent in routine patterns of everyday living. What stands out in memory are the moments away from the mundane. When we break away from the ordinary, time can seem to expand and take on greater long-term significance.
Some families enjoy revisiting the same destination together each year: a cabin, beach house, a favorite resort. We love those times too; the convenience and familiarity put everyone at ease. What these traditional vacations often lack is a memorable element of the extraordinary: discovery, adventure, and exploration. New experiences, new sights, and new opportunities to stretch and grow. All are much more likely away from the routine.
At LANDED, we create original, custom journeys tailored to your specific interests, desires, and style. We choose guides who are an ideal match, delivering the details with masterful storytelling. We pace the day considering each family member’s needs. As parents who travel with our young children, tweens, and teens, we understand the challenges and the workarounds.
Traveling With Our Children
We have traveled internationally with our children from the time they were babes in arms. Those vacations have become part of our story, our family lore. River tubing in Belize. Riding with gauchos in Patagonia. Helicopters over Rio. First encounters with sea lions and giant tortoises in the Galapagos. Each of our girls can remember these, and so many other moments, in astonishing detail.
These trips also enhanced our memories of each child. I can recall precisely my daughters at say, age six, based on where we traveled with them that year. I have vivid recollections of their young faces, their haircuts, the things they said, and the clothes they wore. All those images backdropped by a specific vacation together.
Those travels shaped our parent-child relationships. Our daughters will always remember that we spent those times together, nudging them to live fully, to take on challenges, and to “just try it.”
Our family journeys also molded our children’s identities, giving them greater confidence, awareness, empathy, and resourcefulness. We saw it as a core component of their education. They’ll always remember our preference for investing in experiences rather than objects.
Your Time is Precious, but Your Family Time is Priceless
In 2015, Tim Urban’s penned “The Tail End”, an essay for Wait But Why. Urban calculated that if you see your parents an average of ten days a year after leaving home, and both live into their 80s, you’ll spend less time with them in the rest of your life than you spent with them in a single year of your childhood. By the time he graduated high school, Urban had already used up roughly 93% of his expected in-person time with his parents.
A June 2026 Talker Research survey found:
- 79% of parents feel they have limited time left to travel as a family before their children “age out” of wanting to go.
- 86% of parents wish they had taken more trips with their own parents or older relatives while they still could.
- 90% said family travel is one of the best ways to build memories that last for years.
One of the most memorable travel campaigns was the “18 Summers” promotion by Visit Idaho. The tagline read, “Summer isn’t the only thing that goes by fast. Make every one count.” Its core premise: “Sometimes the best way to bring a family closer is by getting away. If we’re lucky we have 18 summers to adventure together and make life-long memories.”
Our time with our families is finite. We view “free time with the people you love” as the most precious resource.
You may only have one chance to visit a specific international destination with your family. LANDED helps you nail that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We want that vacation to be all that it should be for your family: a source of connection, learning, wonder, and life-long memories. When you travel with LANDED you’ll be informed, prepared, at ease, and free to be fully present for the magic.
Education
We contend that family travel is even better when it includes meaningful educational components. That doesn’t necessarily mean language immersion, classroom time, or destination reports. Some examples from our repertoire:
- Privately guided visits to ancient ruins or other historic sites, where a specialist frames the scene within a broader story—the civilization, the conflicts, and the daily life of that culture.
- Naturalist-led wildlife tracking where children learn to identify species, read animal signs, make plaster casts of tracks, and understand the ecosystem firsthand.
- Citizen-science activities such as bird counts, photographing whale flukes, and tidepool or bird colony surveys.
- Museum visits where children hunt for objects pictured on bingo-style cards.
- Market tours where ingredients are purchased, followed by a hands-on cooking class.
- Participation in dance and drumming sessions.
- Hands-on workshops for woodcarving, ceramics, and weaving.
- Skill acquisition, such as snorkeling, rappelling, photography, fly fishing, or SCUBA certification.
We’ve arranged for marine biologists in the Galapagos to teach children to speak sea lion and learn the mating dances of seabirds. In the Amazon, our guides teach identification of medicinal plants and fungi. In Antarctica, our young travelers have helped with albatross surveys.
International travel helps build practical, applied skills as well: map reading, currency conversion, logistics, and even negotiation. Pre-travel research and travel journals can amplify engagement and retention.
“Travel is not reward for working. It’s education for living.” – Anthony Bourdain
Confidence & Satisfaction
When each of our daughters turned twelve, they were offered the chance to plan a trip for themselves and one parent. They had to work within a set budget and needed to design the itinerary. While traveling, they were responsible for navigating airports and train stations. These “twelve-year-old trips” produced some of their favorite travel memories. They were also deeply rewarding for us as parents.
A review of family travel research by Mirehie & Sharayevska reports that travel as a family is associated with enhanced confidence and overall life satisfaction in children. Other noted benefits: skill development, socialization, and lower stress-related behavioral issues. A separate study (Mikkelsen & Stilling Blichfeldt) found children reported more opportunities for autonomy and independence. They also reported feeling calmer and happier.
The broader developmental psychology themes find that competence builds confidence. Family travel creates many opportunities to attempt small, low-stakes challenges with tangible evidence of success: e.g. ordering at a restaurant in a foreign language, reading a map, adjusting plans due to weather, or trying a new skill. All these experiences allow young travelers to navigate unfamiliar environments, eventually gaining competence and confidence.
Experiential Investments
Van Boven and Gilovich’s research on happiness found that experiences, as opposed to possessions, contribute more to a person’s sense of identity. Experiences also create more durable memories, partly because experiences are more likely to be shared with others and carry higher conversational value.
Across several studies, more than 70% of people report “mentally revisiting” an experience more often than they revisit purchasing a possession. It is no surprise that a single trip can anchor a family’s shared memory and identity for years, well out of proportion to the experience’s duration.
Family Travel is More Than Just “Time Together”
A study in Annals of Tourism Research found that family vacation travel contributes to family bonding, communication, and unity. Families travel to:
- Strengthen relationships
- Escape routine
- Create memories
- Improve communication
- Continue traditions
A Hong Kong study found that family travel strengthens father-child bonds, which in turn enhanced the broader family identity and family cohesion.
The Big Picture
Somewhere between your child’s first passport photo and their last one before college, your family vacations change in significance. They stop being background and become the memories your children will remember most vividly from your time together. On those journeys, you taught them to read the map, try the food, ask the question, and challenge their self-talk.
The most meaningful family vacations don’t happen by accident. They rarely occur from off-the-rack catalog itineraries framed for everyone in general and no one in particular. At LANDED, we design travel around your family and your dreams. We create space and opportunity for meaningful connection. We include places and encounters that spark awe, wonder, and discovery.
Your best family vacation is closer than you think. Let’s get you on your way.
