Traveling with children: is it best to bring your own car seats?

Vacations are a great way to get out and spend some quality time with your family. While planning a vacation, you have to factor in a lot of things if you are traveling with small children. Right from their clothes, feeder bottles, baby food, baby items to their medicines and diapers…the list is endless and exhaustive. Thus you have to do a sufficient amount of planning beforehand as you do not want to miss out anything while traveling with small kids. Traveling involves hiring a car for fun filled trip. A traditional holiday package with all things inclusive makes your trip quite comfortable and stress free, but it is becoming less appealing due to the high costs involved. Hence a lot of families choose private airport transportation like hiring a car for moving around.

Car hiring expenses cannot be ignored as it increases the overall holiday cost. Though the base rentals are competitive, the costs start to jump high when you start to add on the extras. Keeping all this in mind, parents wonder if it is best to bring our own car seats. Here are a few considerations before you come to a decision:

• Cost: Besides the car base rental, renting car seats for your children could significantly add up to the base fare depending on the number of days you rent. Typically they charge around 50 EUR for one week and suppose if you have two kids, who need a car seat, then you will have to pay a significant amount besides rental. A lot of airlines allow you to carry along 2 items in the hold if you have children below 2 years of age. You can carry a car seat as one of the items. But there are other airlines that charge you around £25 for hold luggage, but you can always confirm these charges before making a decision. If you compare the two, cost of hiring a car seat would cost you a lot more though.  
• Compatibility: Most car seats are compatible with the latest makes and models. Though the manufacturer will give you the list of cars for which the seat is compatible, but today most car rentals have the latest cars, so there won’t be any compatibility issue as such. However, you should check in advance with the car rental company if its car seats are compatible with the child car seat you are carrying along.
• Safety and quality: Although most car rental companies provide safe and high quality child car seats that meet the acceptable standards, but there are some countries that do not follow the set standards as all countries have different set of acceptable standards. If you are not sure about the quality of child car seat they provide, it is better to carry your own while considering the safety point of view.
• Damage: A lot of people often get worried about their expensive child car seat getting damages while traveling. Though damaged suitcases are quite common while traveling on flight, but the car seats are not handled like suitcases. Expect a little bit of wear and tear while transit, but you can always wrap it safely before you load it in the flight.

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