Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out. I guess I do need to come up with a backup plan "airbnb" type place, in case they are just absolutely and utterly against my plans to stay at Los Altos. DH says if they don't conform, then we just go without them, lol.
I agree with your DH. Years ago we would adjust dates to accommodate others who wanted to come with, even though it was more expensive. After having people back out twice with set dates, we stopped accommodating dates. It became here is when we are going, come or don’t.
Sometime down the line, we learned the lesson of not accommodating plans for others who insisted on coming with us. It was more stressful and then we felt like we didn’t get to do some things we wanted, in order to make things feasible for the entire travel party.
Travel with family is like herding cats sometimes and mine doesn’t do the points and miles game. So we stick to the annual big family Disney trip Thanksgiving week. This is more manageable since DH and I handle everything and they are just responsible for driving to WDW and their meals.
We also have a group of friends we travel with often and some of them do a little bit of points and miles. Sometimes we are all able to do the same thing, same place, same time on a trip like the recent Galapagos one and there were 9 of us.
Sometimes on some trips we do some things together and sometimes we do our own thing. We’ve got a group of 12 going on our med cruise and DH and I are staying at Le Meridien with a FN cert from BonBlah before the cruise, one couple is at a Hyatt on points and some are at an Air BnB paying cash. After the cruise some are heading to Normandy, some of us are at DLP for 2 nights and some 3 nights, some are staying in Paris and some going home and we are going to Wales. Everyone is perfectly ok with this. Our friends group trip to Egypt with ABD is shaping up to be about the same scenario. Different plans pre and post stay.
We keep the group posted In a chat we have and keep everyone up to date on what we are doing. They can decide if they are in or not. Of course I always help them with using their points and miles to book fights and hotels.
So yeah, I agree with the others who said show them the real money cost, tell them what your doing and then let them decide.
Oh and Happy Lunar New Year everyone!