Whether due to career opportunities, in-laws or just personal preferences, many families have members that, while close in heart may be quite far physically. Getting together has also never been harder given people’s increasingly busier lives and the rising cost of nearly every form of travel. Making sure that

you make the most of your family get together is important. It all starts with just a little bit of upfront planning. The holiday season, particularly Thanksgiving and the Fall and Winter breaks are great times to plan a family get together or even reunion. Popular venues at popular times fill up fast, not to mention that most multi-family vacations may have a dozen or more participants – availability can be a huge issue. Here are a couple of tips to help you keep your sanity when planning a multi-family vacation.

Put someone in charge of the vacation. When we plan multi-family vacations, we agree to put someone in charge of the vacation. While everyone is responsible for their own itineraries (like plane flights) and special needs, someone is orchestrating the master schedule so that everyone can be on the same page. In this way, decisions can be made quickly, there’s a central point of contact for most everything and it reduces confusion and malaise. We publish the master schedule on the Web (via a site like Qlubb) so there’s no confusion as to what is the latest. Everyone should be able to update it with their own itineraries so there is no bottlenecking.   Decide on the dates, location and the venue and start committing early. Usually everyone has a few places they’d really like to go to. Others have certain places that they absolutely don’t want to or can’t go to. Everyone has some level of budget restriction. The person in charge of the vacation should solicit all this information from everybody and even delegate some of the research to family members There are certainly many other wonderful options, like working ranches, Disney World, RV, house boat, camping, renting that castle in Scotland, taking that trip around America on Amtrak but the key is to get the commitment first. As soon as you agree, start booking. Once people are committed, meaningful planning goes a lot faster and easier.   Choose the type of accommodations Once the basics like attractiveness of destination, availability of venue, budget restrictions, travel and hotel costs are all on the table, a decision can be reached much faster which is really important if you want to get your first choice at a reasonable price. Some sample ideas for get together venues are:

1. Villa / Vacation Rental – getting one big house with one big kitchen/living room is a great way to spend quality time with the family. There’s nothing like being able to stroll into the living room to watch a late night movie with whoever’s staying up. Conversations need not be interrupted prematurely and plus there’s always a central base that is the hub of activity. Keeping an eye on the younger kids is a breeze and can be much more of a communal activity.
2. Cruise – the ultimate in convenience. You don’t have to worry about food and you unpack only once. Make sure you get rooms reasonably near each other or else you risk spreading the hub of activity.
3. Tours – Some tour companies can customize a tour for your family if you have a minimum number of people in your group. Many view tours as a the great way to learn more about a place while others may view tours as being too restrictive.
4. Hotels / Resorts – suites are a great way to pack more people together and to save on costs by cooking. For large get togethers though it can be somewhat impersonal because hotel rooms are too small to accommodate everybody for a chat or to play a game and so you end up with dispersed minigroups within the get together. If you have to book multiple hotel rooms, try to get them all in one wing or even suites that connect if possible. Look for the group discount too -- depending upon the size of your group you may qualify. Ask the manager if there isn’t something official as you can always take your business to someplace else. http://www.tripadvisor.com has a good collection of guest reviews on hotels.
5. Family members house – choosing one family member’s house to congregate is definitely the cheapest option. You never have to worry about picking the right restaurant and stocking up is easy to do.

  Do the basics in planning and only the basics. Here’s a quick checklist of things that you should make sure you have:

• Make sure the dates are right and that you know everybody’s schedule (flights, etc.)
• Make sure everyone has booked lodging. There are great services like Tripit where you can put everybody’s day-by-day itinerary in place so that you know where everybody is.
• Make sure everyone is accounted for and can get from point A to point B (e.g. everybody can get from the airport to the house?). Make sure driving maps are printed out and stored electronically.
• Agree on the things that everyone wants to see and do. Websites and guidebooks are a great way to find out what are the best things to see and do are.
• Get everyone’s cell phone number, pager, instant messenger handles, etc. for quick communication
• Make sure you understand any local issues like visa’s, shots, temperature and weather patterns and provide that information to all family members. Local guidebooks and many Internet sets are great resources for this information.
• Consider booking a few restaurant reservations before your trip. If you have a large group, trying to find a decent restaurant last minute that can accommodate a large party may be impossible. On one family vacation we went to Los Angeles over the Christmas holiday and had to skip Christmas dinner because we just couldn’t find a place to accommodate all of us.
• Think about what you will need like snacks, breakfast foods, beach toys, etc. Think about setting up a WalMart or Costco run as your first order of business when you get there so you can stock up on the things you need early at a cheaper price.

Use the Internet to plan If you have more than 3-4 families, communication is often off-line (it is just too hard to get everyone on the phone at the same time, thus the need for these vacations!). One way to communicate and coordinate is online, at everyone's own time. Email is good for communicating decision but terrible at coordinating tasks. For group coordination, use online signup-sheets and group calendaring found on sites like Qlubb Remember, though you are in charge of the vacation, you are not supposed to do everything. Use the online group sites to put in the daily itinerary (Qlubb also has automatic event and task reminders - put in planning tasks (e.g., hotel reservations, car rental reservations, ticket reservations, restaurant selection reservations)- family members can sign-up to take on the responsibility - create a shopping list of things to bring (family members can sign-up for to buy these things) - create a supermarket list of things to buy once you get the destination (we often create a master list for a start-of-the vacation Costco run)   Don’t be control freak. Nothing can sap the fun out of a vacation than somebody who can’t roll with the punches – and especially for the person who is organizing or helping to organize the vacation. The key thing is to be flexible. No vacation works out exactly as you plan. Remember that you are having a vacation and that means having fun, not making sure everything on the planned itinerary is checked off. Also I usually only plan at most 2 things in a day. Getting so many people coordinated is difficult already and any transitions between activities takes more time than you think. Somebody always wants to visit that gift shop for a little bit extra time or to take that side diversion and you have to be able to accommodate for that.   But do plan activities. The purpose of a family vacation is to have family spend time with each other and especially to engage with each other in conversation. A couple of ideas to make sure you include everybody and increase those memorable moments…

• Cooking meals together – it’s certainly cheaper to eat inside but the bigger benefit is that you get people working together in the kitchen talking. And there’s nothing like being able to share your food repetoire with your family members.
• Slide show – family slideshows are only boring to those who aren’t in the family. Seeing baby pictures, embarrassing photos and swapping stories are a great way to get the family laughing together. Powerpoint and a projector are the best way but bringing a DVD with all of the goods is another great way to get some great laughs.
• Video Games? -- well it depends. For most families, banning video games are essential to prevent the children from spending their entire vacation in front of the television. However there are many group participation games that are a blast for groups. On the Wii for instance, there’s Rock Band, Karaoke type games and a multitude of brain teaser and puzzler games that are fun for everybody.
• Exercise – the Kennedy’s aren’t the only ones who play football when they get together. Get people out on the court, get some exercise and have some fun.

    Deal with the money early. It’s good to work out a system with regards to shared costs early so there is no misunderstanding. Some families prefer to spend everything separate by family while others pay up front and say “pay me later.” For the latter, it’s important to work out a good way to distribute the costs fairly. Some families keep track of every dish that is ordered and while that is clearly the fairest way, it’s also requires the most effort. In my last vacation we had 4 families. For shared costs like meals, we split it up by number of adults and number of kids (we counted each kid as half an adult) so that we could simplify the calculation. It’s never perfect but why worry about nickel and diming among family. Everyone should keep their receipts and ideally, you spend the last day putting stuff into a spreadsheet so that you can settle up that day or at least soon after the vacation.     Start talking about the next vacation You can’t beat face-to-face communication. Spend a little time on the last day talking about what you want to do for the next vacation. You can get a lot done talking about it in person in a group versus over email or over the phone and plus you’ll be fresh with the knowledge of what worked well and what didn’t.     Keep the vacation spirit alive Make sure everyone gets back fine by sending an email or making a phone call. Do some photo sharing and if you are enterprising, put together a photo book using services like http://www.shutterfly.com and http://www.blurb.com so that you can always remember the good times.