Are family travellers the forgotten market?

Walk through most accommodation websites and you'll find a family room, a line about cots available on request, maybe a kids' menu. Families are accommodated in the most literal, minimal sense of the word. But being accommodated and being catered to are not the same thing.

If you run a hotel, a serviced apartment, or a holiday rental, are families with young children a market you're serving, or one you're turning away without meaning to?

The market hiding in plain sight

Family travellers are not a niche. Even before the post-pandemic surge in domestic travel, Tourism Research Australia recorded around 17 million overnight trips a year by Australian families with children, accounting for 62.3 million nights and $14.2 billion in spend. That works out to roughly $228 a night, with families staying an average of 3.7 nights.

This is not a budget segment, either. Around a quarter of those family trips were taken by households earning more than $200,000 a year. Just under half of all family nights were spent in commercial accommodation — hotels, apartments, rentals — with the rest largely at the homes of friends and relatives.

That last figure is the interesting one. A meaningful share of families default to a spare room at a relative's place, not because they want to, but because the alternative comes with too much friction. The mental load of travelling with a baby or toddler is high enough that, for many parents, the easiest holiday is the one that avoids a commercial booking altogether.

Which means the gap is also the opportunity. The families finding it hardest to travel are precisely the ones with the most to gain from accommodation that makes it easier.

What "family-friendly" usually means

For most accommodation providers, "family-friendly" comes down to a portacot on request and a highchair if you're lucky. The cot is often of unknown age and uncertain condition. Parents know this, which is why so many travel with their own. When your guests are wheeling a pram and a travel cot in from the car, the family-friendly offering on your website isn't really being utilised. It's being worked around.

That’s giving you a huge signal. The competition for a family's booking isn't only the hotel down the road. It's the option of not booking at all.

The safety question most accommodation providers can't answer

Ask your front desk team a simple question: when a family checks in and requests a cot, what's the process for confirming it's safe and clean?

Most accommodation can't answer that with confidence — and that's understandable, because checking the structural safety of child equipment was never the core business. But it is a real liability. Safety consistently ranks among the top factors families weigh when they book, sitting just behind cost for many parents. A single review mentioning an unsafe cot or a grubby highchair undoes a lot of goodwill, and it's the kind of review that's hard to walk back.

The providers who solve this don't just remove a risk. They give their team a confident, reassuring answer for the most safety-conscious guests they'll ever host.

What families want (and search for!)

Parents are already solving this problem themselves, and the search bar shows exactly how. Across the country, families type queries like pram hire Melbourne, pram hire Sydney, cot hire holiday rental Australia, and baby gear delivered to accommodation. They search for how to travel with a toddler without checking luggage, because lugging a car seat, a pram, and a portacot through an airport is its own small ordeal.

What they're describing, in plain terms, is a setup that's already done when they arrive — cot assembled, highchair in place, the essentials stocked and the toys out ready for little hands. The holiday starting at the door, rather than at 9pm once the travel cot is finally up and the baby is finally down.

That's the experience families are looking for. Most accommodation isn't built to deliver it — but it doesn't have to be.

The small shift that makes you the obvious choice

There's a small but growing category of baby equipment delivery and child travel equipment setup services — businesses that deliver and set up the full kit at a family's accommodation before they arrive: portacot, pram, highchair, nappies, wipes, playmat, toys. One booking, all the essentials, set up and ready.

Travel Tots is a Melbourne example of this model. It's a mum-founded service currently operating across Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, and the Yarra Valley, built specifically around delivering and setting up baby gear at accommodation ahead of a family's arrival. It's early — pre-revenue, with strong early interest from the families it's designed for — but the model itself points to where family travel is heading.

For an accommodation provider, the appeal of partnering with a service like this is that none of the weight falls on you. You don't buy or store the inventory, manage the cleaning and safety checks, or take on the upfront cost. The family gets baby equipment delivered and set up to a standard you can stand behind, and you get a family-friendly offer that's actually used — plus a reason for families to choose you over the hotel that still hands them a cot of unknown vintage.

It turns "cots available on request" into something families notice when they're deciding where to stay.

The opportunity in front of you

Family travellers aren't forgotten because they're small or low-value. They're forgotten because the friction of travelling with young children is mostly invisible to anyone not currently living it — and because most accommodation treats families as an exception to design around rather than a market to design for.

The providers who fix the gear problem, without taking it on themselves, become the obvious choice for a large and high-spending group most accommodation overlooks. If you run accommodation in Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, or the Yarra Valley, it's the conversation to be having about making your accommodation…well, more accommodating. And wherever you are, it's a shift to make before a competitor gets there first.

Frequently asked questions

Are families really an underserved market for accommodation? Families with children represent a large and high-spending share of domestic travel — around 17 million overnight trips and $14.2 billion in annual spend in Australia, with about a quarter of those trips taken by households earning over $200,000. Despite that, most accommodation offers families little beyond a cot on request, which leaves a sizeable, well-resourced segment under-served.

What do families with babies and toddlers want from accommodation? Above all, they want to arrive to a setup that's already sorted, and they want to trust that any child equipment provided is safe and clean. Parents commonly search for options like pram hire, cot hire for a holiday rental, and baby gear delivered to accommodation precisely because they want to travel without hauling all the equipment themselves.

Can hotels offer baby equipment without buying and storing it themselves? Yes. Baby equipment delivery and setup services handle the inventory, cleaning, safety-checking, delivery, and setup. The accommodation provider doesn't carry the cost, the storage, or the liability — the gear is simply delivered and set up at the property before the family arrives.

What is baby equipment delivery for travel, and how does it work? It's a service that delivers and sets up the full family travel kit — portacot, pram, highchair, nappies, wipes, playmat, and toys — at a family's accommodation ahead of their arrival. The family books once, and everything is in place and ready when they check in, so they can travel with a toddler without checking a pram or portacot as luggage.

Does Travel Tots work with accommodation providers? Travel Tots is a Melbourne-based service delivering and setting up child travel equipment across Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, and the Yarra Valley, and it works with accommodation providers who want to offer families a complete, safety-checked setup without managing it in-house. Accommodation providers in those areas can reach out to start a conversation.

Market figures: Tourism Research Australia, domestic visitor profiles (families with children).