You can take babies and toddlers on long-haul trips – but be prepared

As family holidays become ever more exotic, we ask whether taking little ones across the globe is a genius move or a foolhardy trend

My daughter was one and a half when I was sent to Mauritius on a work assignment. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was staying in child-friendly hotels and the three-hour time difference meant that jetlag would be non-existent, so it made sense to combine my trip with a family holiday. My laid-back toddler had already proved herself a fantastic traveller on our many journeys between Britain and Switzerland, where we lived. We were ready – or so I thought. 
We were about six hours into the 12-hour overnight flight when, having failed to have any sleep whatsoever, my daughter had a spectacular breakdown. As she yelled dramatically by the toilets (a situation that eventually came to a much-needed halt when a desperate flight attendant popped a Mauritian wafer in her mouth and she fell asleep on first bite), I felt like a dreadful mother and a dreadful airline passenger. Though the rest of our trip was brilliant and the journey home was drama-free, I haven’t flown long-haul with my daughter since. She’s now 12. 
Perhaps I’ve been too cautious. Far-flung trips with little ones now seem par for the course. According to Thomas Cook, the number of bookings for its long-haul packages increased two-and-a-half times year-on-year during July and August 2024, at a time when families are most likely to travel. It seems that parents who have grown up on backpacking and graduated to exotic holidays want their children to share in the excitement of uncovering new cultures and experiences. 
Telegraph Travel’s commissioning editor, Emilee Tombs, and her husband, Joe, took their daughter, Rae, on a trip around Thailand when she was just six months old, making the most of maternity and paternity leave. 
“It felt like a really great opportunity,” Tombs says. “When do you ever get that much time off?”
Tombs acknowledges that Rae won’t remember the experience, but education expert Ruth Lue-Quee, who embarked on a two-month adventure in Bali and Thailand with her own one and four-year-olds this summer, believes her adventure will nurture family relationships in future.
“In society nowadays, so many parents work, and life is busy. I know people say [younger kids] won’t remember travelling, but if we applied that logic to everything then we wouldn’t read them a book, wouldn’t sing them a song, wouldn’t do anything,” she says. “Every experience that they have impacts and shapes their development.” 
In many ways, travelling long-haul is easier when children are very young (you can take a baby on a plane from around a week old on most airlines, though they’re unlikely to have a passport at that point). 
“Babies tend to sleep better in the air,” says sleep expert Hannah Love, who travelled the world as a nanny to the children of professional golfers before having her own kids. “The oxygen levels being lower helps them, as does the white noise.”
Younger babies can use airline-provided bassinets, breast or bottle feed on take-off and landing, and be rocked to sleep in a sling should they get grizzly. 
“Have a few sleep triggers that they recognise when it’s time for them to go to sleep,” Love recommends. “That doesn’t have to be the same cot in the same dark room in the same house. It might be a white noise app on your phone or a specific sleeping bag that they put on. Once you’ve got a baby that can sleep well and independently, they can sleep anywhere – including on the plane.”
When Tombs left for Thailand, Rae couldn’t yet walk and was still breastfeeding, which, she thinks, made things easier. The family also benefited from a soft landing, as they were able to spend their first few days with her husband’s brother, who lives there, before travelling to the Golden Triangle and some of the country’s idyllic islands.
Some of Tombs’s overriding memories are the interactions that Rae had along the way. Following one explosive nappy disaster in a restaurant in Bangkok’s Chinatown, the owner rushed to get Rae a new “tiny satin Chinese outfit” from a nearby stall while Tombs changed her on the floor. It’s hard to imagine anyone in a London restaurant or British seaside pub being so amenable.
And while Lue-Quee was in Bali, her son was invited onto the stage to sing Baby Shark and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with a performer in a shopping mall. “I’ve never gone anywhere where they are as accommodating and as friendly to children as Bali,” she says. “It is phenomenal.”
Nevertheless, for parents of toddlers, getting to and from a long-haul destination could prove challenging. “Between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half is the busy, busy stage,” says Love. 
For pregnancy and post-natal activewear designer Claire Gleave, who took her toddler and three-year-old to New Zealand for five weeks while pregnant with her third child, a seat rather than a lap for her younger son was a prerequisite, although it cost much more, because it gave them all plenty of room. She also used the boys’ car seats on the plane, which meant that they slept better and it was easy to buckle them in for take-off and landing.
She and her husband planned their journey carefully, factoring in stopovers to help with jetlag. But sometimes, even the best laid plans go awry.
“We started off in a campervan in New Zealand, but we quickly decided to trade it in for an SUV and motels,” she says. “We originally thought it would be better for the boys to have a consistent environment while we travelled, because they were so young. But actually, we decided that perhaps it wasn’t quite so good for our marriage to be stuck in a very small campervan,” she laughs.
Lue-Quee took a different approach, only booking her first two weeks of accommodation and then letting her children lead her choices going forwards.
“When we first went on to Thailand from Bali, we checked into a resort-type hotel in Koh Samui, which had a kids’ pool and an amazing softplay. I felt they just really needed a week of play,” she says.
Adaptability seems to be key – but are there situations when long-haul travel with little ones isn’t advisable at all? 
“This is something you should be enjoying, not something that seems like a chore,” says Love. “If you’ve got a baby that’s up 15 times a night and screaming most of the day, you are not going to enjoy your time away. The best place for you is in your home, where you feel safe, you’ve got your home comforts and you’re not putting any extra stress on your life. But whatever situation you’re in – whether or not you’re struggling with colic, reflux, cow’s milk protein allergies, sleep, a baby that’s waking up many times a night – if the situation is preventing you from having the life you want, know that there is help out there and you can change it.” 
And what if, like me, you unexpectedly fall foul of a mid-air temper tantrum? Here, too, Love had good advice: “The first thing to realise is that your baby’s cries are going to be 10 times louder to you than anybody else,” she says.