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- Posted: 15/09/2026
Family Travel Essentials for Easier Holidays With Kids
Jenna Carr
Founder of The Travel Mum
The best travel items that actually make travelling with kids easier
Travelling with children is very rarely straight forward. Someone needs the toilet, someone has lost a earphone, and your phone is on 3% with the hotel address and all the boarding passes on it. Pretty standard travel day for many!
A few well-chosen bits can take some of the faff out of family holidays. These are useful items to consider for the journey, your accommodation and days out, from a portable potty to something that keeps the kids occupied while you attempt to finish a coffee.
You certainly do not need all of these items. Start with the things that regularly make your trips harder, then pack accordingly. Buying half of Amazon and paying for another suitcase defeats the point of a budget holiday!
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Less faff on travel days
Travel cup holder
If, like us, you rely on coffee to get through a travel day, this little cup holder earns its place in your travel essentials. It attaches to your cabin case handle, keeping your drinks handy and freeing up your hands for children, bags and finding the passports. Again. You can also put your passports in it keeping them easily accessible.
Until you’ve tried to juggle all of that with a hot coffee, you might not appreciate the appeal. Once you have, a dedicated place to put your cup feels like the height of luxury.
Trunki suitcase
A suitcase that carries their clothes and doubles as airport entertainment? Excellent use of luggage space. Our kids get a surprising amount of joy from pulling, pushing and riding their Trunki while we wait around. Anything that makes another hour at the airport more bearable gets our vote.
We often travel with just these for the kids’ luggage. Check your airline’s size allowance before you fly, though: whether a Trunki counts as a free cabin bag depends on the airline.
Baby Backpack
A cute little backpack with room for a few essentials and a detachable rein for toddlers who see an open space as their cue to leg it. They get the excitement of carrying their own bag, you get somewhere to stash a few extra bits and a way to keep your tiny escape artist close.
It comes in lots of cute styles.
Apple AirTag for keeping track of your luggage
Watching the same three suitcases go round the carousel while yours fails to appear is nobody’s preferred start to a holiday. An Apple AirTag tucked into your luggage can give you another way to check where your bag was last detected.
When we’re sat waiting to depart, we like to check our bags actually made it onto the plane!
Luggage scales for avoiding airport repacking
There is a special indignity to opening your suitcase at check-in and redistributing pants in front of strangers. A small set of luggage scales lets you check the weight at home and again before the return journey, once the souvenirs have somehow multiplied.
These are great value and don’t take up much room.
Passport wallet for fewer frantic bag searches
Passports have a remarkable ability to disappear into the one pocket you have already checked four times. Keeping them in a dedicated wallet gives them an actual home, along with any small travel documents you want close to hand. This one is fab as it holds the whole families.
Travel Fan
There’s nothing quite like arriving somewhere hot with three rucksacks, a toddler who refuses to walk and someone asking for the passports you’ve just put away. Meanwhile, your last nerve is boarding a flight home.
I don’t go anywhere without this fan. It hangs around your neck, leaving your hands free for the toddler and the endless rummaging. The chaos is much easier to deal with when you’re not also sweating through your clothes.
Trunki Portable Booster
If your holiday involves a hire car or pre-booked car journeys, sorting out the right child seat in advance removes one fairly significant arrival-day job. The Trunki BoostApak combines a backpack with a booster seat, which makes it worth considering for an older child who is suitable for that particular model.
Check the exact seat’s approval label, size or weight limits, fitting instructions and suitability for your destination and vehicle before buying. It is not a baby or toddler car seat, and you should not choose it on age alone.
Power and entertainment for the journey
Power banks are essential
Your phone is often your boarding pass, map, booking confirmation and emergency entertainment department. A flat battery can create more drama than simply missing a few messages.
The INIU 20000mAh power bank is an option for topping up compatible devices when a socket is nowhere to be found. Keep the right cables with it and charge it before you leave.
Kids headphones for a more peaceful journey
A downloaded movie or two can be very useful on a long journey. The entire plane does not, however, need to hear it. These wireless headphones are aimed at children and include volume-limiting settings.
Let your child try them at home first: how they feel matters far more than whether they look cute in the packing pile. Charge them, pair them with the device you are taking, and check that downloaded content plays offline.
Travel games for kids
We always take a variety of travel sized games wherever we go. It gives you something to do together when the swimming is finished but nobody is quite ready for bed.
These are some of our family favourite travel games
Games for younger children
A small matching game or a few magnetic tiles are useful for that gap between ordering dinner and dinner actually arriving.
It gives younger children something to focus on without needing charging, Wi-Fi or your phone, which you may currently be using to translate the menu.
These have worked well for us
Useful bits for your accommodation and days out
Travel adaptor for the charging queue
Two phones, a tablet, headphones and one adaptor can turn bedtime into a charging rota. This model combines two UK sockets with three USB ports, giving you more connection options in one place.
The version listed is a Type E/F adaptor. Check the sockets at your destination, the USB connections your devices need and the adaptor’s total load limit. Keep your charging bits in one pouch so they are easy to find when you arrive.
Carry Potty for those “I NEED A WEE” moments.
“I need a wee” tends to arrive just after you have driven past the services or found your spot on the beach. A portable potty can make outings simpler during potty training, particularly when unfamiliar toilets are a sticking point.
Pop up baby tent for a beach shelter or pool
Beach days with a baby require a bit more planning than throwing a towel down. This pop-up tent is worth considering if you want a safe, easy spot for your little one. We combined it with a portable fan to keep our baby cool. You can also fill it with water to use as a shaded paddling pool. Great on cruises when babies in nappies cant use the main pool!
Waterproof phone pouches for splashy days out
A phone pouch can be handy when you want your phone close during a boat trip, waterpark or beach day. This pack contains two pouches, useful if both adults want one rather than negotiating whose phone becomes the designated holiday camera.
Check that your phone fits, follow the sealing instructions and test the empty pouch before trusting it with anything valuable!
Water shoes for beach days
A beautiful pebbly beach can lose some of its appeal when everyone is doing the barefoot shuffle to the water. Water shoes are worth considering for stony shorelines and appropriate waterside activities where you want something on your feet. We always take them for the children as it helps when the sand is hot too.
Beach Toys
For a long time we would buy a bucket and spade on every holiday, then never bring them home because of luggage space. We recently discovered this foldable bucket and spade set and they’ve served us well on every trip since!
We also have this skimming ball which comes everywhere with us and has provided lots of pool and beach fun.
Cool box for road trips and picnic days
Taking your own food and drinks can help keep day-out spending under control, especially when somebody announces they are hungry every 20 minutes. A cool box gives you more scope to bring picnic food along and keep drinks chilled with suitable ice or cold packs.
This is a premium option to consider if camping, driving holidays and regular picnics are already part of family life. For one occasional beach day, a basic cool bag may be all you need. This is much more of a car-boot item than something to squeeze into your flight luggage.
Choose the family travel essentials that solve your family’s problems
The most useful travel purchase is the one you will actually use. If charging is always a headache, start there. If you are potty training, prioritise making toilet stops easier. If your children are perfectly happy with a colouring book, there is no need to buy them an entire entertainment system.
Check what you already own, think about the trip you are taking and leave the rest. A slightly easier journey and fewer things to rummage through is a perfectly respectable holiday win.
I hope this list of family travel essentials has been useful!
Written by: Jenna Carr
Founder of The Travel Mum
Our family is passionate about helping you save money. We are real people who understand the need to make your budget go further. With The Travel Mum we have created a vibrant community of over 840k+ savvy travellers who want to travel more while spending less. No problem is too big or small, together we will do everything in our power to make sure you are making the absolute most of your well earned budget!
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