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Trend in parents opting for family city breaks over beach holidays

In a bid to expose their children to more cultural locations at a younger age, British parents are opting to take their children on city breaks within Europe instead of more traditional all-inclusive beach holidays, according to new research.

The study, conducted on behalf of Staycity Aparthotels, polled a total of 3,193 British adults, all of whom had at least one child aged 16 or below, in a bid to understand how parents' attitudes towards foreign travel with their offspring had evolved in recent years.

Respondents were split evenly according to gender and region, and disclosed to researchers prior to being polled that they?d been on at least one European trip abroad with their children in the past twelve months. Just over half of those polled (52%) stated that they?d taken a traditional beach holiday, with 39% taking a city break and 9% revealing that they?d enjoyed both types of trip with their young families.

Those who had enjoyed a family city break were asked how old their youngest child had been during the holiday, with the average answer emerging as 11 years old. Comparatively, those who?d enjoyed beach holidays had children with an average age of seven years old.

The most common cities visited included Amsterdam (14%), Paris (12%), Dubrovnik (7%), Barcelona (5%) and Copenhagen (3%) and reasons given for opting for a city break included: The appeal of local attractions/landmarks/events (36%); To introduce children to a new language/culture (18%); To educate children on the history of the city (14%); To visit family/friends in the city (11%); and No other holiday appealed to the family (6%).

The company's CEO, Tom Walsh, said: ?Foreign travel with children is a notoriously stressful experience, but the findings of our research clearly highlight that an increasing number of British parents are growing bored of the traditional all-inclusive holiday, and instead want to immerse their children in city culture from a younger age.?



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