Play away

Even though more of us are putting together our own holidays, packages can still be great when you want the children to have plenty to do. SANDRA O'CONNELLpicks 10 of the best and, right, asks whether the package deal might be growing in popularity again

WHEN IT COMES to hoary old chestnuts, the travel industry has a biggie: when the kids are happy the parents are happy. Just because it’s a cliche doesn’t mean it’s not true. Indeed, ensuring the kids are happy is the main reason why just about the only people still buying the traditional package sun holiday seem to be families. But where, in their pursuit of familial happiness, are they going? Go asked a number of tour operators to identify Europe’s most family-friendly properties, to find out what it is about them that keeps the bucket-and-spade brigade returning year after year.

• Unless otherwise stated, all prices are for a family of two adults and two children under 12, travelling for one week from Dublin in the first week in July

1 Princesa Yaiza Suite Hotel, LanzaroteIf you thought package holidays always meant cheap and cheerful, think again. This one is at a five-star property in Playa Blanca on Lanzarote, Ireland's favourite Canary Island. Apart from a great location on a blue-flag beach, the main attraction for kids is Kikiland, the hotel's adventure park, with 10,000sq m of playground equipment, sports facilities and no fewer than five kids' pools. It has a soccer school run by former professional footballers, tennis and squash courts plus child-friendly entertainment nightly. In fact, so considerate of parents is it that, even though there are eight restaurants on site, the family rooms have their own microwaves, so you can heat baby bottles and baby food.

• A week's B&B in the first week of July for two adults and two children costs €4,716 with Topflight (topflight.ie), including flights from Dublin

2 Suitehotel Fariones Playa, LanzaroteA Lanzarote hot spot that is even more popular with Irish package holidaymakers is the Fariones complex in Puerta del Carmen. Made up of hotels, aparthotels and self-catering bungalows, Fariones is great for parents with sports-mad kids. Its on-site sports complex has pools, tennis courts and table-tennis tables, as well as a children's playground, free kids' clubs and family entertainment each evening. The location is good, too, at the end of a long sandy beach two minutes' walk from the main promenade and five minutes' walk from the old town. Those travelling with kids will also appreciate the 15-minute transfer time from Arrecife airport. It now has early-bird offers for June, with free upgrades from double rooms to junior suites and one child aged between three and 14 staying for free when sharing with two adults.

• The price for a family of four staying in a self-catering apartment in early July is €2,456 with Topflight (topflight.ie)

3 Paloma Grida Village, TurkeyAll children measure a holiday's greatness by one thing: the water slides. Sunworld has decided to capitalise on that with the launch of its Aqua Mania programme, which enables parents to choose a property on the basis of its pools. So far it has 18 hotels to choose from, with 200 water slides, flumes and chutes and 100 pools between them. The five-star Paloma Grida Village, on the Med at Belek, is one. The large property, with 459 rooms, has its own slide complex, so you don't have to fork out for expensive water parks. There are also child-friendly buffet restaurants plus six à la carte restaurants and a very family-oriented late-breakfast option. Kids under six stay free, while seven- to 12-year-olds are half price. The hotel is 40 minutes from Antalia airport, right on a blue-flag beach.

• The all-in price for a week's holiday is €3,376 with Sunworld (sunworld.ie).

4 Hotel Pestana Alvor Praia, PortugalPortugal is good value even by package-holiday standards. This five-star hotel has recently been given a makeover, so it now has an interior to match its terrific beach-front location. Added to Alvor's long sandy beach is the hotel's saltwater pool, a kids' pool and a private beach. There are tennis courts, table tennis, mini golf and, from July to September, a water-sports centre.

• A week at the hotel in early July costs €3,624 with Topflight (topflight.ie). For a cheaper option, check out Club Praia da Oura, which is a good, solid three-star-plus in buzzier Albufeira. There's a lively nightlife for older teenagers here, but the real draws are the Aqualand and Slide and Splash water parks, a short drive away. One week at Club Praia da Oura, self-catering, costs €2,479

5 Club Med, MoroccoBookings for all-in packages are on the way up, according to Sunway, with holiday buyers keen to establish the cost of the entire trip upfront. But budgeting is only part of the appeal of the all-in specialist Club Med. On top of that is the range of activities laid on, from water sports to horse riding, tennis to quad biking. Its kids' clubs offer age-appropriate activities, including for under-twos, so that parents of even the youngest tots can get in on the act.

• Sunway (sunway.ie) has a week at Club Med in Morocco in July from €999 per adult, falling to €838 for teens and €480 for under-11s. Under-twos go free, although there is a charge of £300 (€331) to use the Baby Club. The price includes full board plus all the drinks and snacks your Speedos can handle

6 Bella Italia Hotel, ItalyThe area around Lake Garda is Italy's theme park HQ, being peppered with water parks, safari parks and Gardaland (the Italian Disney). The Bella Italia resort, on the southern shore of the lake, has great facilities for kids, from bike hire to archery classes and football, as well as a series of pools. There is nightly kids' entertainment plus a little funfair with a mini-motorbike circuit, trampolines and bumper cars. Pedal boats can be hired, too, but for teens with a serious interest in water sports, or interested in learning, cross the lake to the more picturesque northern shore, which has established itself as a water-sports and windsurfing centre.

• A week's B&B at the four-star Bella Italia Hotel costs €2,696 with Topflight (topflight.ie)

7 H10 Mediterranean Village, SpainSalou, on Spain's Costa Dorada, is a long-standing family favourite, not least because of the enormous adventure and aquatic park at Port Aventura. H10 Mediterranean Village makes a great base for visiting this. The hotel is of a good four-star standard, close to the beach and with a choice of pools, evening entertainment and just a 500m walk to bars and restaurants. It has a children's playground for four-to 12-year-olds, a kids' club and an on-site supermarket. The hotel has also won a slew of best-for-families awards, including one from the hard-to-please reviewers on TripAdvisor.

• Sunworld (sunworld.ie) has one-bedroom apartments for €2,418

8 Club Vounaki, GreeceThis is a Sunsail destination, so you don't have to worry about spending too much while you are there (it's half board) and you don't have to give a minute's thought to what to do with the kids. Club Vounaki is a Royal Yachting Association training centre that hosts dinghy races, windsurf clinics and mini flotillas, as well as waterskiing and wakeboarding lessons. There is mountain biking and tennis, too, but really the aim is to get you on your watery way to a new hobby or improve the skills you already have. By night it's all barbecues and live music.

• A week's stay departing June 27th, with Sunway (sunway.ie), costs £1,019 per person (about €1,126) flying from the UK. Two-to 12-year-olds get a discount of about €100 each

9 Holiday Village, SpainFalcon/JWT has Holiday Villages sprinkled around the Med, each designed to be a fun-filled family resort in itself – to the point that you'll find little reason to leave. Holiday Village in Benalmadena, on the Costa del Sol, has teamed up with the Irish theatre school Stagecoach to provide dance, drama and singing classes for kids between six and 15. If the children are looking for other things to do, there's also a soccer school, swimming lessons, lagoon-style pools with a pirate ship to climb aboard (and slide down), a cinema, mini golf and four kids' clubs.

• A week self-catering costs €2,460 (falconholidays.ie)

10 Disneyland, ParisWhile not strictly speaking a sun destination, Disney has to be included because it looks after children so well and the package value is terrific.

• Abbey Travel (abbeytravel.ie) has 40 per cent off a four-night stay at Disney's Cheyenne and Santa Fe hotels if booked before the end of April. Kids stay and play for free, which means prices for two adults and two children (aged under seven) start at €499 per family, excluding flights, on selected dates. For this you'll get four nights' B&B plus five days' entrance to both Disney parks. As a five-day pass bought at the gate would cost as much, a package means you get the accommodation for next to nothing.

Package versus personal: who’ll win out in the end?

IF TRAVEL AGENTShad their wits about them they would have an advert with a catchphrase similar to the one used by Specsavers. I only say it because, despite being a long-time devotee of the DIY holiday, the phrase "should have gone to a travel agent" sprang to mind unbidden during my last two family holidays.

In the first instance I was making a by then daily trek to the reception of an Italian resort to report that my fold-down bed folded down on to the floor every time I moved. By day 13 the receptionist wasn’t even looking up when assuring me it would be sorted, pronto. To be fair, by that stage my sleep-deprived eyes weren’t a sight to behold. I looked like I had spent the fortnight sniffing glue.

On the second occasion, in France, I was bitten by a stray dog while cycling through a forest. My receptionist here was delighted that I managed to bring his rental bike back but not so helpful about contacting a doctor for stitches, not to mention rabies jabs. “But it’s Wednesday,” he shrugged, with a moue so pronounced he was lucky I didn’t bite him.

In both instances the desire for a holiday rep to sort it all out was strong enough to make me wonder if, this year, I wouldn’t be better off revisiting the package holidays of my youth.

When the time comes to book, however, I’m pretty sure the lure of the low-cost flight and an opportunity to avoid paying over the odds for accommodation mean I’ll be back once more flying solo, so to speak.

Except that I’m hardly alone in self-packaging. Seats on charter flights have almost halved in recent years as people migrate to low-cost airlines in their droves. We do so for a variety of reasons, not least of which is flexibility. “Charter flights typically only go out at weekends and only for a seven- or 14-night period. In recent years that inflexibility began to suit people less and less,” says Irene Winters of Wicklow Travel. She believes package-tour operators further shot themselves in the feet by concentrating on accommodation at the lower end of the market. “Over the past 10 to 15 years, people were building houses and doing up their homes. They didn’t want to go to a place that wasn’t up to their standards, so they just went online,” says Winters.

Then there was the fatal growth in overseas-holiday- home ownership. “More than anything that killed off the package holiday,” says Winters. “You had people offering to let their properties to friends and relatives for €200 a week and all they had to do was book a Ryanair flight to get there.”

The result is that Winters’s days were too frequently spent recommending various destinations to potential customers, only to have them go home and book online. “That, plus a reduction in airline and package commission, means the numbers just don’t add up any more,” says Winters, who is winding up her business – one of 87 Irish travel agents to do so in the past year, she reckons.

“Packages will always appeal to families. If they offer good kids’ clubs, they will always do well. Other than that, the package holiday is not going to make a comeback,” says Winters.

“As long as people can get cheap flights, they will go for the most cost-effective option. If you book far enough in advance with a low-cost airline, and book your property direct, that is the less expensive option for your standard bucket-and-spade holiday.”

In fact the Irish Tour Operators Federation reported a 10 per cent increase in bookings in January, with growing niches such as escorted tours, long haul and cruise-related travel accounting for much of this. Somewhat ironically, it could also be the recession that is driving people back to the package.

“I think the benefits of buying a package holiday from a bonded operator are, if anything, better appreciated by holidaymakers now because of the number of companies that have gone out of business as a result of the downturn,” says Tanya Airey, boss of Sunway Travel.

Buying from a bonded travel agent or tour operator means you won’t lose your money if the company goes bust. It also means you get the services of a holiday rep to sort out whatever little crises arise while you are there. “The merits of the package holiday still stand,” says Clem Walshe, former marketing director of the now defunct Budget Travel and founder of Localmarketing.ie, a travel consultancy. “The hidden danger of booking direct, especially for families, is that when you go on your own and something goes wrong, you really are on your own.”

Toute seule,no less.