You would think. This is what irks my daughter the most - that the oldest never defers the first pick to anyone else.
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I second this. As i noted above, we do this frequently.
I can add nothing. I’ve never stayed in an Airbnb only in hotels. It’s nice to have a room joining my grown children and to have other cousins on the same floor sometimes the hostess will have a common suite with people looking and gathering it.
I like to travel and a shared bathroom is a hard no for me as well. We always get up in the middle of the night and I’m not walking down a hallway to a strange bathroom.
We once stayed in a treehouse and it was a requirement for me that it had to have a toilet/sink. I was not climbing out of a tree in the middle of the night multiple times!!
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I am in this camp. I make several nighttime bathroom trips. I always choose the bed closest to the bathroom, the room with the en suite, or the room closest to a bathroom. This way, hopefully, I don’t disturb others when I get up at night.
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I am easy. On a girls trip I do not mind sharing a room, I will share a bed as long as it is at least a queen (preferably a king), and I don’t mind sharing a bathroom. Often that means I end up in the master. Although my last trip I ended up on a trundle.
My youngest (who lived 3 years in a disgusting frat house) has become quite bougie and requires his own room and bathroom.
When I stay with my grandkids I have the option of a guest room but they request I sleep with them so I do.
The only time I have traveled with a group is for H’s family reunions. The older generation ( until the last few years) were my in laws and their age group. They got the choice rooms and I was fine with that.
What I wasn’t fine with was that H and I and our kids almost always got the WORST room situation ( and he was not the youngest)! One time we were a mile away from everyone else! Another time the 4 of us were assigned a tiny room ( maybe 10x 10) with a double bed for H and me ( and he was a big guy) and a bunk bed for the kids. We could barely fit the luggage in the room. Did I mention the kids were HS and MS age and the bunk was sized for little kids so their feet were hanging off!
Now that we are the “ oldest generation “ we make sure no one is in that situation.
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I suspect your husband and you were very nice and didn’t complain (too much) so it was assumed that you would be good sports and put up with the bad accommodations.
Sometimes people take advantage of others inherent niceness.
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One time we sacrificed on bathrooms for Paris apartment location (near Notre Dame)… 2 couples, 2 bedrooms, and what we thought was 1.5 bathrooms. Turned out it was one toilet closet and another room with sink/shower. We survived
With the same couple we opted to share an nice apartment in Florence. (I think it was $300/night split 2 ways vs $600/night or the nicer hotels closer to Duomo). The compromise was a shared bathroom. The surprise bonus was getting the room with huge private terrace area with picnic table, which I had seen in website photos. Eating leftover pizza and sipping local wine while overlooking the city on an lovely early October evening was wonderful!
Note: The building pictured is the Synagogue, near near our Palazzo dei Ciompi location.
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I agree with this, and there was one time I felt really guilty enforcing it.
We went on a guided bike ride, and ahead of time I knew one place we were staying only had 1 room with its own bath. I said we wanted to do the trip as long as we could have that room at that stop.
WWWEEELLLL, there was a mess up somewhere, and a group of six women wound up on our trip, but the trip was 2 over normal capacity.
When we got to “the place,” they tried to put us in a room with shared bath. I told them we had been promised the room with the bath. They got it worked out. Our room with the bath had at least 2 huge beds in it, and I think it actually had more - maybe a king and two queens. It was a HUGE lovely room. All of the other rooms were kind of like dorm rooms, with X shared baths in the hall. The 6 women had to double up. I did NOT give up my room.
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I did a six week European trip with my sister. She thought, ahead of time, that it was odd I wanted two bedrooms and bathrooms for the trip
We shared an amazing room in Florence, but the rest of the time we had our own rooms.
She end up thinking that was fantastic, just the weird sleep patterns when adapting to time zone changes is enough to make that a good idea. But she hates noise when sleeping, and I hate light. And when I cannot sleep I move around a lot, it was great to be free to be ourselves and not worry about disturbing the other person.
Also, nice on a 6 week trip to just have our own space to retreat to.
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I’m contemplating a trip to Europe that I’d like to do with a friend (2 weeks max) and am thinking of which one would be good with getting our own hotel rooms along the way. I also like the idea of being able to retreat to my own room and not worrying about disturbing another with my tossing & turning (I’m also a very early riser, although I know the time changes would mess with that). Also, they need to be good with me making all the hotel selections 
(I would be more than happy to let them handle activities and/or restaurants).
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I am at a point in my life where I just want/ need my own space.
I get up early, need a very dark and very cool room to sleep in, get up to use the bathroom a few times, etc. I’m not sure most people would even WANT to share a room with me.
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Let us know your cities, maybe we will have recommendations!
Thank you!
I’d like to see more of Italy. I went to Rome last year when I visited my daughter on her study abroad. There’s more to see there but I’d also like to hit the lakes region, Florence and Amalfi. I would also love to revisit Prague (I loved my hotel there and would probably book it again). My daughter was based there but I only had 3 days in that lovely city. I’ve been to Barcelona but would love to see some other cities in Spain (Sevilla, Bilbao). Also Vienna. The list is all over the place, so I’d have to narrow it down for a 2-week itinerary. I also don’t want to spend all my time flying around and packing/unpacking, so I’d likely decide to just do Italy or pick one other location and split it between the two weeks.
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We give the “best” room to whoever is oldest or if that doesn’t decide it, I give it to whoever is least likely to have that experience on their own. So my inlaws, based on their seniority, or my youngest kid, based on their finances.
We are sharing a pretty big place for my oldest’s wedding and the nicest room is going to the elderly relations of FDiL. He has a degree of dementia and his wife deserves some small amount of luxury!
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We did this a few years ago for our 60th birthdays. There were 9 of us, and it was hard to find a house that adequately accommodated all of us. My hard no was a shared bed. Two twins, ok. We gave the master suite to the organizer/woman who signed the lease. I don’t remember how we decided the rest of the rooms, but on paper they all seemed similar, although some were singles. But in reality, some had quirks that made them less than ideal. A mistake we made was not deciding how much each bedroom would cost the person/people in it prior to choosing. When it came time to apportion the rent so we could settle up - day 5 of a 6 day rental, there was disagreement which led to some frustrations and bickering, exaggerated because it was near the end of the trip and patience was in less supply. We worked it out but it was unfortunate that this was part of what was otherwise a fabulous time with great friends. Lesson learned - divvy up the rental costs first then let people choose the room. Obviously a hotel would make this easier, but we covet the gathering spaces and the ability to eat some meals in the house rather than a restaurant. @CollegeNerd67, where have you traveled with your girlfriends? We are beginning to think about our 65th birthday gathering. For our 60th, we went to Cape Cod. Our group all lives on the east coast, from Florida to NY. PM me if you have any great suggestions!
I traveled recently in a group of 7 women, staying in hotels because we were doing a tour. We all paid the same, but had 3 double rooms and a single. We took turns with the single, and everyone was happy. Some of the women are not married and wanted to share, as they were old friends.
My bottom line is no shared beds, but OK to share a room if needed. On other trips, with different groups, we have shared places with a bedroom for each person. Have always generally just split the cost although if two folks were sharing a room and others were in singles, may make sense to reduce the fee for those sharing.
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I think “best room” is also debatable. Is the best room the largest? The one with the tv or en suite?
In one AIRBNB we rented for 3 years as a family there were 3 bedrooms and a loft sleeping area. Youngest (then) single D took the loft. H and I and D1/Husband took the 2 main floor bedrooms. S and DIL took the upstairs bedroom which was probably the largest and most private but it was decided after year one that they should continue to use it because they had the most different sleeping habits. They stayed up later watching tv, slept in the most and often liked naps. The rest of us were more early risers and just saw a bedroom as a bedroom. The upstairs bathroom was just outside their room and they freely shared that with loft sleeping daughter and really anyone who wanted to use it!
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I don’t think I’ve ever gone on a non-family trip where we had to choose rooms or didn’t have separate accommodations.
In our early pre-kid years, we would split a beach condo with the in-laws, and SIL’s family. We all paid the same, but the SIL would get the master suite because they had 2 kids. Made sense, but still part of me was like they get the huge room & private bathroom with the jacuzzi tub while we get a broom closet with twin beds for the same price? I figured later it would be our turn, but somehow even with kids it’s didn’t really happen. Not long after we had them, we started doing our own thing for other reasons. I prefer to see different things, not the same beach every year.
When we took our kids and their GF’s (now FDILs!!!) to Austria, we had a 3 BR airBNB in Vienna. One bedroom was by far the biggest, but it had a 2nd BR adjacent to it - you had to go through the big one to get to it. The 3rd bedroom was the smallest, but it was separate. H and I took the small, but separate BR. Older S/FDIL1 took the biggest room, but all 4 of them sort of hung out together in there until it was time to sleep. Seemed to work well.
We took one big 3 week European trip with my parents, my family (pre GF era), and my sister’s family. We had 3 different Airbnbs. In the first one, H snagged what he thought was the best - it was down a hall and separate from everyone. I wouldn’t say it was bigger or nicer. The second place was quirky - we had 4 tiny 1 BR apartments that were all contained in 1 small building from the 1400s or so. Each apartment was 1 floor and had this very old windy staircase. My parents took the bottom, my sister the 2nd, we got the 3rd and all 4 college aged boys took the top floor. My niece stayed with my sister. It worked. In the final place, there were 2 separate really nice looking apartments. I made my sister choose first - whoever took one of them had to also take my parents. She chose for my parents to be with us, lol. But the joke wound up being on her (no, I wasn’t laughing in reality) because her apartment wound up having brown sewage leak through the ceiling into one of the BRs! I was so glad SHE chose it!
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