Summer can be challenging for single parents taking kids on holiday. The cost, the logistics and sometimes the feeling of not quite fitting in are just some of the reasons why a break away for these mums and dads can be tricky. Travelling with your children when you are not in a couple can be daunting. Some venues welcome this growing demographic with open arms. Others are still selling holidays like it’s another era. “It drives me mad when hotels advertise a ‘family break’ and it’s always a mom and a dad in the advertising. Families look very different in Ireland now,” says single parent Linda O’Sullivan. She’s mum to daughter Caoimhe (16) and son Michael (9), and has been a single parent for seven years. “I’ve had holidays where they’ve tried to charge me for two adults and two children and I’ve challenged hotels – I’m one adult going on holidays with my two children and I shouldn’t be penalised for being a single parent.” This narrow definition of “family” in “family holiday” stung when she was newly single, but now she’s comfortable calling it out.“I’ve held people to account because it’s not appropriate for you to say what my family should look like. My family is what it is. I should only be charged for one adult. I’ve become very good at saying, ‘My family is me and my two children and this is what I’m looking for.’” Attitude in hospitality settings matters, and the mums and dads who may most need the break can sometimes feel the least welcome. Some online booking systems aren’t built for single parents. When booking for one adult and two kids, a hotel will often direct them to book in as two adults and one child, or the booking defaults to a larger family room. But single parents don’t need a double bed. The two adult dinners and two full Irish breakfasts priced into the “family” deal aren’t needed either. Linda O'Sullivan on holiday in Eurodisney with her children Caoimhe (16) and Michael (9) O’Sullivan has become a return visitor to Eurocamp in Paris. Its system allows you to select the number of adults and offers a special discount for single parents, she says. “You are not made to feel like you are taking up a space, or you have to make up for not having a second adult.”Hotels of course can charge what they like for a room. It can make good business sense to maximise adult occupancy – two adults are likely to spend more than one on food, drinks and spa treatments, right?But one-parent families aren’t the anomaly they used to be. Almost 220,000 family households in Ireland, or 17 per cent of all households, were headed by one parent at the time of the last census in 2022. This included 186,487 one-parent mother families, and 33,509 one-parent father families. Some holiday venues, however, don’t acknowledge these families’ needs, or would prefer not to have their custom. Their marketing and pricing is squarely aimed at traditional, nuclear families.The Irish Hotels Federation has no remit in the pricing and packaging of hotel products – it’s a matter for individual hotels, it says in response to a query. Some self-proclaimed “family-friendly” establishments seem to think heterosexual two-parent families are the only ones that exist. Marketing slogans that invite “Mum and Dad” to relax together while the kids are entertained are out of time. [ ‘Australia left me cold’: Irish Times writers on their favourite - and most overrated - holiday destinationsOpens in new window ]“At 17 per cent of households in Ireland, single-parent families are probably as big as the LGBTQ community – so why is all of their marketing around the heteronormative, together, family unit?” asks Aoife Desmond. She is a single parent to a daughter and board member of One Family, an organisation that seeks equality for all families. “Hotels need to be mindful – we do have economic power,” she says.When Desmond first became a single parent, going on holidays with her daughter, who was nine at the time, took courage. “At the beginning, the key thing was just having the bravery to go,” says Desmond. “You do feel a bit different as a single parent, and that can feel isolating.” She has been in a co-parenting situation for the last eight years. Her daughter is now 17 and the two have had numerous adventures together. Some were more enjoyable than others. 'You do feel a bit different as a single parent, and that can feel isolating,' says Aoife Desmond, on holiday in Antigua “The first holiday was very stressful. You are still very raw, you are kind of uncovering your new status,” she says.They went to a huge resort complex in Spain and it was just too big, says Desmond. Holidaying solo with a child without another adult to help with logistics was challenging.“Going to the loo, you had to pack up all your things from your lounger every time,” she recalls. “You don’t really think about those challenges before, and I just chose the wrong hotel, a big resort, and it was totally unsuitable.” When her daughter was 10, the pair went to Barbados, choosing a smaller hotel. “It was just 20 rooms, it felt very safe. There were less young families and more retired couples, or families with older kids. Everyone was lovely to us.”Now she chooses destinations where she and her daughter can do day trips so they are less reliant on the hotel experience. “Finding other people who are not in that heteronormative family dynamic, that definitely reduced the isolation for me,” she says. Destinations advertising family breaks can fail to think through how solo parents experience their amenities, says Desmond. Marketing and pricing in access to spa facilities as part of a package, but not facilitating solo parents with children to use them, means someone hasn’t thought about the solo parent experience, or how they can get value for money, she says.Don’t put all the single parents in one corner, it’s up to them if they want to mix— Valerie SteinbeckShe describes one west of Ireland hotel where her daughter, then aged 10, was not able to access the spa or wait for her mum in the spa area.“The facilities weren’t accessible to my child, so I would have had to leave her in the hotel room and I wasn’t going to do that. If something is included, but someone is excluded because of their status, then your packaging is off,” says Desmond. Valerie Steinbeck isn’t a single parent, but when her three daughters were younger she holidayed with them solo most of the time because her partner, who works in hospitality, often had to work. She found the solo experience uncomfortable at times. “My youngest was a toddler, and the other two were five and seven,” she says. “Eating out in the evening in the hotel, I was very conscious of the tables – with fathers basically – moms and dads were getting served faster. They were getting more attention, their drinks were replenished.“I found it embarrassing a few times with young kids, where you are sitting there with a table full of dirty crockery and nobody is coming over to see what you need. There were instances like that over the years where I felt bad.”Steinbeck works at the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney, Co Kerry, and in 2017 she pitched the idea of offering “Flying Solo” family breaks for parents holidaying alone with children. Work schedules, annual leave restrictions, trying to cover care during long school holidays – there are lots of reasons for one parent to head away with the kids on their own. “That option wasn’t there at the time and it used to frustrate me no end,” says Steinbeck.Before launch, the Gleneagle trained staff on how to make parents travelling without partners feel more welcome. Valerie Steinbeck on holiday with her three daughters in 2019 “It was about guests not being made to feel different, or not getting different levels of attention,” says Steinbeck. “If you have booked a room on your own and you are dining with kids, you might need a bit of extra help, or you might not.“Don’t put all the single parents in one corner either, it’s up to them if they want to mix themselves. Be attentive, but don’t ask a solo parent if they are waiting for someone else to join them at the table.” The Gleneagle now runs kids’ clubs at Easter and summer, giving parents holidaying solo with kids a break. There’s a kids’ disco at night too where parents can sit and relax, giving them a chance to mix in a way that isn’t forced, says Steinbeck. “Families look very different today than they did 20 years ago, and holidays should reflect that,” she says. “It’s not always possible for couples to get time off together, so we regularly see parents who simply want to take the kids away for a few days on their own without it becoming unaffordable.”Other single parents cite the Midlands Park Hotel in Portlaoise as overtly welcoming. The Amber Springs Hotel in Gorey and the Riverside Park in Enniscorthy are also name-checked. The popular online single-parent hub Frolo sees many single parents meeting online and arranging holidays and attending festivals together too. [ Hobby holidays: Nine places to engage with your passions, from hiking to horseridingOpens in new window ]Cost is a huge factor. School holidays can be a difficult and expensive juggle for single parents working outside the home. Some will go into debt plugging childcare gaps, others are forced into less well paid or part-time work with more amenable hours. More than seven in 10 single-adult households with children under 18 had at least some difficulty making ends meet in 2024, compared with three in 10 households composed of two adults, according to Central Statistics Office figures cited by One Family. Taking any holiday, especially during school holidays, is prohibitively expensive for many single parents. That’s why room rates really matter. For Steinbeck, staying in a hotel with her young kids used to mean booking a family room. “I was paying as if there were two adults,” she says.“If you book a family room, the hotel prices it for two adults – so they might say an adult is €100 each and we are only going to charge the kids €25 each, so I ended up paying €250 for me and a couple of kids.“I thought it would be great if we did not penalise people because they did not have a partner to come on holidays with them. I wanted us to charge the adult rate for one adult and then the child’s normal rate, and that’s what we did.” Linda O'Sullivan at Eurodisney with daughter Caoimhe and son Michael “Is it just the three of you?” That’s a question O’Sullivan has been asked more than once. There can still be the assumption that your party, when it comprises one parent, is incomplete. But there are many hotels in Ireland that go out of their way to make solo parents feel at home, she says.“I’ve had a glass of wine sent over and more often than not, it’s a female member of staff. They notice you are on your own with the two children and they are trying to make you feel that little bit more welcome.”On another occasion, a hotel manager quietly took care of the bill for her family’s meal on the last night of their three-night stay. She encourages newly single parents to advocate for themselves and ask for pricing that fits their family’s needs. “When you think about it, they are almost discriminating against you for being a single-parent family. That shouldn’t be allowed, because if it was on the basis of your religious beliefs or sexual orientation, it would be a problem, so it shouldn’t be the case for your family status either,” O’Sullivan says. “You shouldn’t be stigmatised, but as we know in this country, women and in particular single parents have been stigmatised for years. It’s really hard, that mindset, or people giving you this glance of sympathy, but I’m like, ‘I don’t need that, I’m fine. I’m with my children on a holiday that I’ve been able to pay for myself. You should marvel at me.’”