Need hotel for big family
 

Hello everyone!
I am taking a trip with my husband and 3 children the first week of April. I don't consider my family big, but for the hotels, I guess we are. Is there any hotels I can stay at without having to book 2 rooms? Or if I do have to, that it doesn't cost over $200 per room? Of course, I don't want to be far from the main attractions of San Francisco. I tried airbnb but they are expensive. Any suggestions? A room with 2 beds and a sofa bed would work.
Thank you!

You should ask the hotels for a king bed - is one child young enough to sleep with you both? Or if there is a sleeper sofa in the room that pulls out into a bed? And finally roll away beds. We did that recently in a hotel. We had a suite type arrangement with a bedroom (for DH and myself) and a living room with a double sofa bed and a roll away bed for the 6 year old and the 4 year old snuggled with us.

There are 3 HI Hostels in San Francisco. You might be able to reserve a 6 bed dorm room for just your family. Another useful feature of the hostel is a kitchen so you can make breakfast before heading out to see the city.

You should start by searching on booking.com. Put in your family size and they'll ask for the ages of the kids. Put in your dates and budget. I picked a random weekend in April for a family of 5 with kids 1, 3 and 5 and it came up with 44 properties that could accommodate you (and many more if you top out your budget).

Hi, I have a family of 5 and we've battled this for years, and this board has really helped with ideas. SF7307 is right--a general search engine with filters will save you a lot of time, and booking.com is also my favorite.

What I've found: In suburbs or places where land costs less you can find hotel rooms with two queen size beds and a couch (usually sleeper). Or you have the option of a rollaway bed. For those kinds of hotels, I prefer a national chain like Marriott (Fairfield Inn, Courtyard, Residence Inn).

Cities--especially New York, San Francisco with limited land--tend to have small hotel rooms. There will be a fire marshal rule about the number of occupants, and it's always 4 people max. In New York, I heard that hotels enforce the limits because they don't want fined by the fire marshal. So I didn't want to chance it.

On the flip side, some hotels have the couch and the two queen beds but the website says four people only. I have called and asked staff, is that true, would they care? And in some cases they told me to ignore the website and reserve.

For San Francisco, we were going to have our car with us. We opted to stay at Larkspur Landing across the bay. Part of the adventure was taking the ferry into the city. Room slept 5 people, hotel was felt very new, and even had a pool. One day we did the ferry. Another day we drove into the city. It was not a big deal to drive in and park at a garage near Fisherman's Wharf. Get an early start so you get a parking space, and then just leave the car there.

Larkspur Landing Business Hotel | Courtyard San Francisco Larkspur Landing

Have a look at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn, located on Broadway near Columbus where North Beach meets Chinatown. I haven't stayed there but a friend does every time he's in town and likes it, obviously. I love the location and it always seems to be less expensive than other comparable places. And has parking. Can be booked on its own site or booking.com, etc. Compare the various sites.

www.royalpacificmotorinn.com

Thank you all for your suggestions! Good idea with the king size. And I appreciate the hotel names given. Although I’ve used booking.com several times, I found trivago was easier to navigate due to their filters in finding more family hotels. Thank you all!!

Have you seen this website--it specializes in traveling for larger families. You can look up hotels in all sorts of places. Very helpful.

www.sixsuitcasetravel.com

The chain Comfort Suites normally has 2 queens plus a sleeper sofa.

The other chain that normally sleeps 6 is Embassy Suites, also 2 queens plus sleeper sofa.

Many Holiday Inn Expresses will allow 5 in a 2 queen room, bring a sleeping bag.

Homewood Suites and Residence Inn often have a few two bedroom rooms.

Central city hotels usually have 2 doubles or 1 king and won’t work.

How old are your children? You can always redo the top sheet/blanket so that 3 kids can sleep on the bed cross ways--e.g. laying across the bed vs. head of child at head of bed. If they are small/short enough you can easily fit 3 on a queen size bed that way. No guarantees against kicking and other monkey business though :-)

Hey Stanton--on her prior thread in October 2015, she said her kids were "As of Jan. 2, we are on our own (my husband and 3 kids- ages 9,12 ,17"

Well, then they are not sleeping 3 to a bed :-)

Just be careful to abide by the maximum occupancy restrictions. When our family of four stayed in San Francisco at a Union Square hotel, the front desk queried us to see if we had a 5th person in the room. We did not, but they were clearly on top of it.

Wonderful! What a great website to have for any trip. It's going in my folder for sure. Thank you!

Tom_mn, those were the first hotels I thought of, but they were booked for the dates I wanted. I finally found a hotel that had 1 king and a queen sleeper sofa. I'll have my youngest sleeping with us and the two older ones in the sofa.
Thank you all!!

[QUOTE=marcast;16702044]Tom_mn, those were the first hotels I thought of, but they were booked for the dates I wanted. I finally found a hotel that had 1 king and a queen sleeper sofa. I'll have my youngest sleeping with us and the two older ones in the sofa.
Thank you all!!