At some point, your child will reach an age when they’re no longer relying solely on milk to stay fed. When your toddler begins to need more solid food than milk, you’ll rapidly realize the importance of having quick and easy snacks on hand as often as possible — the last thing anyone needs is a hangry toddler! Traveling and staying in a hotel can present plenty of obstacles that make it difficult to keep your toddler well fed. This article will break down some helpful tips for keeping toddlers fed while staying at a hotel. 

How Do I Keep My Toddler Fed When Staying at a Hotel?

It can be challenging to keep yourself fed when traveling, let alone your kids too but it is incredibly important to keep your toddler's stomach full when traveling, in order to keep them happy and avoid any tantrums. Here are a few of our top tips:

1. Pack a lot of snacks
2. Stay at a hotel that features a small kitchen
3. Make a stop at the grocery store at soon as you check in
4. Don’t worry too much about healthy eating
5. Make sure to keep yourself fed too! 

Pack Plenty of Snacks

You really can’t go wrong with packing tons of snacks for your toddler. Try to bring as many travel-friendly, non-perishable snacks as you can fit in your bags — you can even bring a lunch box for your toddler. If you’re driving to your destination, it will be easier to bring lots of snacks in your vehicle, but if you’re flying you may not be able to bring as much. Bring along anything that doesn’t require refrigeration that your toddler likes to eat such as chips, crackers, applesauce pouches, bananas, and granola bars. Bring along enough snacks to at least last for the duration of your travel time, since you can always buy more food once you arrive at your destination. 

Try to Stay Somewhere with a Kitchen

Staying in a hotel or rental home with a kitchen is very helpful when traveling with a toddler because this makes it much easier to prepare and store food. By having the ability to prepare some snacks and meals for your toddler while at your hotel, it will make it much easier to keep your toddler fed since you won’t have to always go to a restaurant or order takeout food for every meal and snack. Look for hotels that offer a small kitchenette and be sure that your accommodation has a fridge available for perishable foods. 

Grab Some Groceries After Check-In

When staying at a hotel with a toddler, you’ll definitely want to head to a local grocery store as one of your first stops after checking in. Stock up your hotel with as many toddler friendly snacks as you can so that you always have something you can hand to your toddler when they need something to eat. Most hotel rooms offer a small fridge so you can get some filling and healthy snacks such as fruit, yogurt, vegetable sticks, and hummus. It is important to have food on hand in your hotel room to make snacks more accessible because you never know how long you’ll have to wait for restaurant food to be ready and you won’t want to have to worry about keeping your hungry toddler waiting. 

Don’t Stress About Healthy Eating

Although feeding your toddler a balanced and healthy diet is incredibly important, it can be helpful to accept that your toddler may not eat as healthy when you’re staying at a hotel. You’ll be relying heavily on snack foods and restaurant food so you may want to accept some nutritional compromise. Also, you’ll really just want to make sure that your toddler doesn’t get too hungry and allowing them to eat less healthy foods can help with this. Try to offer healthier snacks at the hotel such as fruit, veggie sticks, and low-sugar granola. 

Keep Yourself Fed As Well 

One of the most important steps to take is to keep yourself fed as well. It will be much more difficult to keep up with chasing your toddler around if you haven’t eaten enough yourself. Setting a positive example by eating regularly can also help motivate your toddler to do the same. Explain to your toddler that you feel better when you’re eating regularly and that it is important to snack often when traveling. Keeping everyone in the family fed can make for an easier time while traveling since you’ll stay in a relaxed mood and you’ll be better equipped to handle any stressors that you run into. 

Travel-Friendly Snack Ideas for Toddlers 

When it comes to traveling with toddlers, snacks are one of the most important items to bring along. Below, we’ve listed a few easy snacks that can be brought along for your next trip with your toddler. Some of these items do require refrigeration so these ones would be ideal if you’re traveling with a cooler or will be storing them in your hotel fridge. 

• Hard boiled eggs 
• Yogurt 
• Applesauce pouches
• Muffins
• Cheese sticks
• Granola bars
• Dry cereal
• Fruit: berries, bananas, chopped apples, cut up grapes
• Raisins
• Trail mix 
• Chips and pretzels
• Hummus and carrot sticks 
• Rice cakes

Whether you’re hitting the road or getting ready to fly to a new destination, you’ll want to prepare plenty of snacks to bring along if you’ll have a toddler in tow. Keeping little ones fed is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your trip goes smoothly and you’ll definitely want to keep yourself fed as well. Don’t worry too much about feeding your child a super healthy diet while traveling, just do the best you can and understand that there may be some nutritional compromise. Once you arrive at your hotel, make sure to stock up on some snacks from a local grocery store. If you can find a hotel that offers a small kitchen, this will definitely make it even easier to keep your family fed while on-the-go. 

The Pop N’ Go Playpen is a travel-friendly playpen that can even double as a travel crib!