Toddler Travel Gear: Hotel Edition

What I bring to keep my toddler from destroying our 300 square foot hotel room. (As a bonus, these are all great stocking stuffers!)

Each month, I’ll send a curated gear guide about a specific area of toddler travel. These posts may contain affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I earn a small commission. I promise I’ll only recommend gear I’ve personally tried and loved. Thank you for supporting Travel with Toddlers!

Hotels used to be an afterthought of the travel planning process for me. Picking a great hotel was more about location, location, location: How quickly can I walk to Notre Dame/the Uffizi/the conference center from here? I once stayed in a hotel room in Paris where the door could barely open all the way because the bed took up 98% of the space in the room. My view on hotel rooms was if I spent more than the eight hours of sleep I needed in there, I was doing something wrong.

That was before having a kid. Now, the hotel is e v e r y t h i n g.

This absolutely stunning view from the Ritz-Carlton Turks and Caicos…heaven on earth. (Don’t worry, we booked it 100% on points, I’m not a luxury travel influencer yet.)

Finding a toddler-friendly hotel takes more research than before.

It’s not just about location and maximizing price/points, though that is key. Now when I book a hotel, I think about:

• Sleeping arrangements. I almost always ask for two queen beds now instead of a king so that we have a second bed if we need to co-sleep and for diaper changes/all of our *stuff.* Our toddler still fits in a pack-n-play (barely) but you’ll want a second bed if they’ve outgrown their crib, too. If you can swing it, a suite is soooooo nice to give yourself a little more space so you’re not sitting in the dark with the white noise on.

• Basic baby-friendly amenities. When you book most chain hotels you can ask for a crib/pack-n-play. Make sure you ask up front because you don’t want to get there and have their limited number of cribs taken if you can’t bring your own. Some places will also have baby tubs, and you can request an accessible/bathtub room as well, though there might be trade-offs with other parts of the property.

• “Yes” spaces around the property. That could be kid’s clubs, but we’ve found that many don’t take kids under 3. Otherwise, wide open lawns, a playground, game room, pool, lounges, or beach access so we can run around and have fun even if we’re not ready to go out adventuring.

No matter where you stay, you’ll probably need to do some adjusting when you first get in the room—do not be afraid to move furniture over outlets, remove everything at coffee-table level, stow away all cords, hide the trash, and call down for twenty more towels or whatever else you need. When I worked at Tripadvisor, hotel owners and managers would always tell me that they wished more people would just ask for something if they need it. They want to help you!

It helps to bring a few items with you that can make it feel a little more like home.

My go-to gear that I always bring in a hotel. All links below.

If I’m traveling by car, I always bring our own travel crib. I know most hotels have them, but after one terrible night where my husband ended up driving around until 3 AM so my toddler could finally sleep because the crib was slightly too small, we just bring our own. “Travel crib” is a total misnomer—this thing is heavy and huge and takes up most of the space in our SUV’s trunk. We have the NUNA travel crib which has served us well. We’ve also used a classic pack-n’-play which gets the job done but isn’t quite as comfy, and my friend loved the Guava until her daughter grew out of it. We always bring extra sheets with us just in case as well.

If your toddler has already outgrown the pack n’ play and you’re worried about falling out of a big queen bed, we bought this air mattress in preparation for the next phase based on a friend’s recommendation. Some people swear by the Slumberpod, but we’ve never used it—we bought our first one on Black Friday and I will report back.

Other than sleeping gear, here’s what I pack specifically for the hotel:

• A foldable potty insert that we keep in the hotel bathroom

• A portable white noise machine for bedtime

• A travel-size kit of our favorite sensitive-skin shampoo and bodywash

• A few fun bath toys that double as pool toys, plus a plastic cup for rinsing

• A special stuffy that only comes with us when we travel (we have two, just in case we lose one.)

For babies, I would not necessarily bring new toys—bring what they really love playing with, your tummy time mat/blanket, and/or your bouncer. Whatever you’re already using at home, bring with you. And extra trash bags for all those diapers!

It’s toddlers that you really start to need a strategy…

I pack a special “surprise” tote bag that has all the toys for the hotel stay in it.

The best hotel toys that we always pack for toddlers 1-2.

I keep these toys tucked away in a closet at home when we’re not traveling so they always seem new. I try to buy 1-2 brand new small things for each trip, usually from the dollar store or Facebook marketplace.

• These window gel clings are so much fun for my vehicle-obsessed kid.

• These spinners do it ALL and have been in our bag since the 3-month mark.

• I usually pack one of these small balls so we can play catch inside or outside.

• Mess-free coloring books since we’re still in the markers-draw-everywhere phase

• Animal figurines with cards are a good one because we can do several different games.

• These wooden cars come with us everywhere.

• A pop-it is always in our travel bag.

• Painter’s tape, which doubles as help with safety things if needed, but we found it just attracted our toddler to the outlets when we put it over them. (wompwomp)

• The Lovevery bug shrub and threading toy from this kit are some of our favorites from recent Lovevery boxes. I would 100% recommend getting this toy subscription, all of our favorite toys are from there.

You can bring really any kind of toy that they’ll like—what matters is that they haven’t seen it in a while so it’s special, and it’s small enough that you can cram it into your suitcase without losing space on other things.

Hotel-themed books!

For trips, I pack books from the library based on the destination, like Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey during our staycation in Boston. The rest of the space I use for bedtime books/comfort books, especially because we tend to do a lot more snuggling and cuddling in big comfy hotel beds together. That includes:

• Star Fishing by Sang-keung Kim is a delightful book about a little boy who can’t sleep.

• I have memorized Time for Bed by Mem Fox, and ordered a second copy when I left one at a friend’s house.

• We have every truck/vehicle book you can imagine so Good Night Good Night Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker is on heavy rotation in our house.

• Hush Hush Forest by Mary Casanova has stunning woodblock prints for a quiet goodnight.

• Wild Child by Lynn Plourde is absolutely beautiful autumn-themed book that we have loved reading this fall.

Thanks for being here.

Dreaming of aesthetically pleasing, Wes Anderson-inspired hotel designs like this pool in Ogunquit.

I know you already have too much stuff you’re bringing with you on a trip, but most of this hotel gear is designed to make your life easier—and I try to pack items that are small enough you can sneak them into pockets or extra zippered compartments without noticing them too much. I spend so much more time in a hotel room traveling with a kid than I ever did beforehand, so anything that can contain/entertain long enough before we head out to the pool/elevator/our excursion for the day can make the vacation go so much more smoothly.

Thanks for reading,

Kayla

Thank you for supporting Travel with Toddlers! If you liked this issue, please like it, share it, all the things. It really does mean a lot. I’m just a mom in the thick of the toddler years trying to create core memories for our whole family while minimizing meltdowns—I sincerely hope this helps you do the same.