Why you should skip hosting for the holidays and go to a hotel

10.12.2024 - 21:27 / thepointsguy.com / Christmas Eve

Here are a few things you should know about me. I love spending time with my friends and family. I love to cook. But I do not love hosting for the holidays.

I know that some people absolutely do love preparing a big turkey dinner with all the fixings and inviting loved ones into their homes for the holidays. I am just not one of them. I don't like the amount of cooking, cleaning and hovering about it takes to make sure everyone is having a good time.

Related: 12 festive hotels for people who really love the holidays

I've found a great alternative for hosting during the holidays: Skip it altogether and head to a hotel. I just returned from a Thanksgiving visit to Orlando, and it was the perfect way to kick off the holiday season.

Here's why I think you should forgo hosting duties and spend the holidays in a hotel.

My husband and I have three kids — all boys — and as hard as we try to make it otherwise, our home's cleanliness level is questionable at best. The amount of work we have to do to make it presentable is more than we can manage on top of keeping said boys fed, clean and clothed.

This year, we flew to Orlando, where a pristine room was waiting for us at the Gaylord Palms Resort near Walt Disney World.

We returned to our room each afternoon to find the beds made, the garbage emptied and the room tidied. I still did my best to keep the kids' mess under control in between cleanings, but this alone alleviated a lot of my holiday stress.

I am a huge advocate for tipping hotel staff and restaurant servers, and I recommend tipping even more around the holidays if you have the means. Tipping a little extra is an easy way to say "thank you." Plus, it was well worth the peace of mind knowing I could soak up extra family time rather than spend the holiday cleaning nonstop.

Though we tried to save money by stocking up on breakfast essentials and snacks for our hotel room, we also dined out during our visit. Most hotels I've visited around the holidays serve celebratory meals on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas.

I enjoyed my Thanksgiving lunch poolside at the Gaylord Palms Cypress Springs Water Park. I'm not sure that a tuna poke bowl is a historically accurate Thanksgiving meal, but it certainly made me feel grateful that I was in sunny Florida sitting by the pool instead of in chilly southern Indiana cooking.

Lest you think we eschewed the turkey and stuffing altogether, we did have a more traditional turkey dinner at the Rainforest Cafe at Disney's Animal Kingdom that evening. The park is less than 15 minutes from the Gaylord Palms, and the animatronic animals made for a lot of Thanksgiving laughter.

In many cases, you don't even have to leave your hotel for a traditional holiday meal. Down