8-month family workation

I’m back in Amsterdam after 8 months of traveling and working remotely.

We started in May 2024 when my youngest son was 4 months old and the oldest was 3 years.

We began our trip in NYC, continued to Hawaii, the Canadian Rocky Mountains, Japan, and ended in Portugal.

I shared business ideas from this trip in my niche hospitality newsletter. There is also an older post about workation with kids. Couple of people wrote me that it inspired them to create a business around this theme.

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Here are some tips for families that want to do something similar:

💻 Work setup

The accommodations that promoted workspace/internet had the worst internet
The issue with the internet is not the speed but reliability
Not working internet was the main headache related to work
Cafés/coworkings don't exist outside of large cities, and with a family, I prefer working from home
A big lifesaver was Airalo, an e-sim service from which you can buy mobile data in a few clicks. I was tethering a lot

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🗺️ Locations

Because of a baby, we chose locations with very developed healthcare system, no diseases/dangerous animals, and safety (there was no compromise with that)
Location is also the main influencer of your costs
As our travel time will be limited with our older son starting school soon, we prioritized locations outside of Europe where it is for us harder to get
We also optimized for good weather. In each location, we stayed a minimum of 1 month (extremely important)
You want to have cool places for kids in walking distance

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🏡 Accommodation

The most expensive and most challenging part of planning
The longer you stay, the better deals you get
We used Home Exchange in Hawaii and paid nothing for 1 month
In Canada, we rented from a mid-term rental agency, and the costs are comparable to long-term rental prices in Amsterdam
Airbnb hosts are very happy to give significant discounts (up to 50%) for extended stays
NYC is expensive, no hacks

🔥 Hospitality highlights

Capsule hotel in Tokyo
Fairmont hotel in Banff
Muji hotel Tokyo
Aman Tokyo
Autocamp and Postcard Cabins in Catskills
Niche hospitality meetup in Lisbon
Dozens of places in NYC (Hospitality Nerd in NYC Guide coming soon)
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🍼 Kids and childcare

With a baby, it was much easier than we expected
My wife was on maternity leave the whole time and spent more time with the kids
My days were very fragmented; I wanted to spend a lot of time with family too and I worked more in the evenings
Kids don't bring viruses from daycare; this part was amazing
We used a nanny/babysitter in some locations, but finding them extremely hard
I can't imagine doing this while both parents work remotely without a full-time daycare/nanny
The older son was missing daycare and socializing with other kids
Japan is amazing, but I wouldn't recommend such a trip with kids there
The hardest part with kids was flights and 3-4 days after
We were both brave and scared before this trip, but at the end, it was epic
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If you can work remotely, love travel, and your kids don’t go to school yet, I highly recommend it!