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The Luxury Family Resorts won a Top 10 Getaways award in 2003 for their support of parents with infants and toddlers.

For 2003's "Top 10 Getaways for Tiny Travelers" awards, our staff and contributing editors selected the Luxury Family Hotels for welcoming families with luxurious service, classy facilities, gourmet dining and proper British nannies.  Here's a look at the four Luxury Family Hotels today.


Luxury Family Hotels
Great Britain

Britain's aptly named Luxury Family Hotels are just that. The members of this exclusive hotel family are four inns: Woolley Grange, a 17th century Jacobean Manor House in Wiltshire (8 miles from Bath); Ickworth, the late 18th-century home of the Earl Bishop of Bristol in Suffolk (part of the National Trust); Fowey Hall, a Queen Anne Chateau, completed in 1899 on the South Cornish coast in Cornwall; and Moon Fleet Manor, a Georgian Manor in West Dorset.

The seaside or countryside locations, and the manicured grounds and gardens provide varied and spectacular backdrops for a fun-filled and relaxing holiday for all ages. Best yet, these "luxury" hotels deliver on their promise with gourmet meals and a staff that won't let mom or dad worry about anything.

Rather than being stuffy they are quite grand, but also cozy, and extremely welcoming to families. The hotels range in size from 23 to 39 rooms and suites, with a wide range of rooms suitable for families of all sizes, including some connecting rooms. The inns can provide baby travel cots, changing mats, sterilizers, bottle warmers, high chairs and feeding accessories.

As part of a family of their own, the four properties have much in common and a most important feature that they share is excellent childcare. Supervised playrooms for newborns through age 8 are called Bear's Dens, and there are extensive recreation facilities for older children. Each nursery or crêche is registered with OFSTED, a British government organization which insists on high standards for staff training, safety, cleanliness and health in daycare centers. They perform spot checks on all facilities, as well as background checks on all nannies, and provides information for emergency procedures. All of the Bear's Dens offer complimentary, supervised care from 10am-4:45, but are open from earlier in the morning through the evening in case families want to play at other times. The indoor facilities include a wide array of toys, drawing and painting equipment, and the outdoor play areas feature climbing equipment, sand boxes, slides and swings, and areas for lawn games. A Nursery High Tea is served at 5pm, and remote baby monitor, as well as private babysitters (£6/H) are available.

Each of the four Luxury Family Hotels also offers an unsupervised indoor and outdoor area for kids who have outgrown the nursery, with features such as an adventure playground, bikes, football nets, squash and tennis facilities, board games, pool tables, music and video games. When not hiking, biking or sightseeing, families tend to gather here to "play" together, especially after meals.

All of the Luxury Family Hotels' rooms are tastefully decorated and are equipped with phones, televisions, video players, radios, hairdryers and adult-size bathrobes, and most provide guests a daily newspaper and morning tea. All emphasize healthy cuisine and feature locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables in their restaurants, and they all offer a swimming pool (mostly indoors), and massage, spa and/or holistic beauty treatments. Each region offers something different to explore, whether nearby medieval towns, museums, cliffs and coastlines, or the gardens and antique shops of the English countryside.

The childcare and use of facilities at all four is free of charge, and children stay free in their parent's room and are charged only for meals.  Fowey Hall provides complimentary fresh fruit, home-baked biscuits and mineral water, as well as a full English breakfast and dinner in their rates, and the three other hotels offer a Bed, Breakfast and Dinner option as well.