The Luxury Vacation Is No Longer About Escaping Your Children

Yes, traveling with kids is hard. But new hotel offerings — and shifts in how we parent — are making it a lot more fun, too

Illustration: Daukantė for Bloomberg

My 6-year-old daughter is sitting on the swim platform of the Princess Grace, a grand 65-foot catamaran. Her hair is wet and her face streaked with tears.

From the water below, I use my most encouraging, least pressuring tone to beckon her into the ocean — underneath us, I tell her, are sea turtles. Real sea turtles! (She’s obsessed with sea turtles.) And parrotfish! (Today she’s obsessed with those too.)

But the steady bounce of waves — which manages to rock even the calm waters of the Turks and Caicos — has her paralyzed.

We’ve come to Providenciales, the archipelago’s main island, on a bit of an experiment. Along with about a dozen other parents and kids, we’re here to test-drive a new “family camp” piloted by Grace Bay Resorts before the busy festive season, which spans most of December and early into the new year.

Most of the other groups have been invited free-of-charge. Many are travel advisers with Embark Beyond, whose typically ultra-high-net-worth clients might be interested in such offerings. A few are friends of the resort’s executive team. I’m here on my own dime to both participate and bear witness to a new trend in the making.

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