Family reunions

Three generations in one place is the hardest brief on this site, and it fails in a predictable way. Four rooms in a lodge, one dining room, one schedule. The grandparents are up at six with nothing to do, the teenagers surface at ten to find breakfast cleared, and everybody is polite about it for a week.

A private house fixes most of that in one move. You take the whole thing. The kitchen works to your hours instead of the lodge’s, the early risers go out at six, the rest of the group appears when it appears, and everyone converges at dinner because that is the only fixed point in the day.

What a house gives you that rooms do not

A cook, and a kitchen that will feed people at three different times without anyone apologising. A pool, which is what the middle of the day is actually for. Two vehicles rather than one, so the group can split and rejoin. Somewhere for the adults to sit up after the children have gone down.

The same logic works in the bush with a small camp taken on exclusive use. Many are six to twelve rooms, so a family group can take the whole thing more easily than people expect. Each property sets its own minimum on rooms and nights and prices it differently, which is why we run the numbers both ways before recommending either.

Laikipia and the coast both do this well and they do it differently. One is a house with a view and a vehicle at the door, the other is a house with a boat and a reef ten minutes out. Plenty of groups do a few nights of each.

The bit that takes the work

Not the accommodation. The arrivals.

Eight people on five flights, two of whom change plans in the last month, one connecting through somewhere that requires a visa, and a grandparent who should not be sitting in an airport for four hours. That is where a reunion is won or lost, and it is the part we would rather own entirely. Send us the passports and the flight details as they firm up and we build the transfers around them.

Tell us early

Ages, mobility and diets, in the first email. They change which houses we shortlist before they change anything else, and they are much harder to fix once a deposit is down. If there is a birthday or an anniversary inside the week, say so. A single evening with everyone at one table is usually what the whole trip is for.

Good to know

• School holidays are the real constraint. Different countries break at different times, and a mixed-nationality family should start with a calendar rather than a camp.
• One organiser, one thread. We can still quote and invoice per household.
• A house often wants a minimum number of nights. It is usually shorter than people fear.
• Two vehicles is the difference between a good week and a negotiated one.