Your family is planning three weeks in Europe this summer. Your eight-year-old twins need consistent care and supervision while you’re working remotely from various cities. The obvious solution is bringing your nanny, who knows your children, understands their routines, and can provide the stability they need in unfamiliar environments. You casually mention the trip during a Monday morning drop-off, assuming she’ll be excited about the opportunity to travel. Instead, she seems hesitant and starts asking detailed questions about schedule, time off, compensation, and logistics that you haven’t thought through because you assumed traveling together would just work itself out.
After twenty years placing nannies with families from Los Angeles to major cities nationwide, including many positions involving regular travel, we’ve learned that extended family trips with nannies can be outstanding experiences or disaster situations depending entirely on whether families establish clear expectations before departure. The trips that work beautifully involve detailed advance planning about schedules, compensation, time off, boundaries, and logistics. The trips that deteriorate into conflict involve families and nannies discovering incompatible expectations mid-trip when it’s too late to course-correct and everyone is stuck together thousands of miles from home dealing with resentment and frustration.
Why Travel Complicates Employment Relationships
Many families don’t understand why bringing their nanny on vacation creates complications that don’t exist during normal employment at home. After all, you’re paying her to care for your children whether that happens in Los Angeles or London, so what’s the difference?
The difference is that travel fundamentally changes the boundaries and dynamics of your employment relationship in ways that require explicit renegotiation of terms. At home, your nanny has clear work hours with defined start and end times. She leaves your home at the end of her shift and returns to her own space where she controls her environment, schedule, and activities. She has genuine time off where you’re not present and she’s not expected to be available or responsive to your family’s needs.
Travel eliminates most of these natural boundaries. Your nanny is with your family constantly in shared accommodations. She can’t leave at the end of her shift to return to her own space. She has limited ability to separate from your family or have genuine privacy. The line between work hours and off hours blurs because she’s always physically present. Families unconsciously make requests during supposed off hours because she’s right there and helping seems natural.
Without clear advance planning, nannies end up working essentially around the clock because there’s no natural end to their availability. They can’t truly rest or enjoy being in new locations because they’re either actively working or on-call in proximity to families who might need them at any moment. What families perceive as exciting travel opportunities feel like constant work to nannies who never get to disconnect.
These dynamics create resentment and burnout quickly when expectations aren’t aligned. Families feel they’re providing amazing opportunities that nannies should appreciate. Nannies feel they’re working without appropriate compensation, time off, or boundaries. Neither party is wrong, but without explicit discussions, the trip becomes stressful for everyone rather than the positive experience families imagined.
Schedule and Hours Expectations
The most critical element to establish before travel is the actual work schedule including specific hours your nanny will be on duty versus off duty, how that schedule will function in practice when you’re sharing accommodations, and what flexibility you need versus what boundaries she needs.
At home, your nanny might work 7am to 6pm Monday through Friday. On vacation, you might need her available 8am to 8pm to cover children while you have business calls, dinners with clients, or evening activities. Or you might need her working split shifts where she’s on duty during morning and evening hours but has midday breaks. Or you might need variable schedules depending on your daily plans.
All of these arrangements can work if they’re discussed and agreed to in advance with appropriate compensation. None of them work if you assume flexibility without discussing specifics and your nanny discovers mid-trip that her schedule bears no resemblance to what she expected.
Specify exactly what hours she’ll be working each day or what the typical daily schedule will look like. If schedules will vary, explain how much notice you’ll provide about the next day’s timing and what the general parameters are. If you need genuine 24/7 availability for some portions of the trip, discuss that explicitly and compensate appropriately for that level of access.
Address what happens when you’re all together but not technically requiring childcare. If you’re at the beach as a family and your nanny is present but you’re supervising children yourself, is she working or off duty? These gray area situations create the most conflict when expectations aren’t clear.
Discuss sleep arrangements and overnight responsibilities. Will your nanny have her own room? Will she be expected to respond to children during the night? If children wake with issues, is that her responsibility or yours? At home these questions might be obvious, but in vacation accommodations where everyone is in close proximity, they need explicit answers.
Establish that even with proximity, off hours need to be genuinely off unless you’ve negotiated on-call availability with appropriate compensation. If your nanny finishes her scheduled shift at 8pm, she should not be expected to respond to requests or help with children unless you’re paying her overtime for that availability.
Compensation Adjustments for Travel
Standard home-based compensation doesn’t appropriately cover the demands and inconveniences of extended travel with families. Nannies who travel with families should receive compensation adjustments reflecting increased work intensity, loss of personal time and space, and restrictions on their freedom that don’t exist at home.
Many positions include travel premiums of 25-50% above standard hourly rates when nannies accompany families on trips. A nanny earning $30 per hour at home might receive $37.50-45 per hour during travel. This premium compensates for the fact that even during off hours, she can’t fully disconnect from work responsibilities, has limited privacy, and can’t freely leave accommodations to pursue her own interests.
Some families provide flat per-diem payments in addition to hourly wages for travel days. This might be $100-200 per day covering the inconvenience and restrictions of being away from home while recognizing that some of her time technically is her own even if the boundaries are blurred.
Guaranteed hours become even more important during travel than at home. Your nanny is giving up weeks of her life to accompany you, potentially turning down other work or personal opportunities. She needs compensation guaranteed for the entire trip regardless of whether you use all her scheduled hours because weather changes your plans or you decide you want to handle childcare yourselves for a day.
Address how travel days themselves are compensated. The days spent getting to and from destinations involve your nanny managing children in airports, on planes, through car rides, in situations requiring constant vigilance. These are intensive work days that should be compensated fully, not treated as downtime.
Discuss overtime compensation for hours beyond her scheduled daily work. If you agreed she’ll work 10 hours daily during the trip but an evening runs late or you need her starting earlier one morning, that should be paid at overtime rates just as it would be at home.
Some families cover all nanny expenses during travel including meals, activities she does with children, and incidentals. Other families provide per diem allowances for her personal expenses. Either approach works, but clarity about what you’re covering versus what she’s paying for prevents awkward situations about who pays when bills arrive.
Time Off and Personal Freedom During Travel
The most common source of conflict during extended family travel involves nannies having inadequate genuine time off or personal freedom to actually experience locations they’re visiting.
Establish specific off hours during the trip when your nanny is truly not working and not expected to be available for requests. This might be several hours midday while children are at activities or programs, or evening hours after children are in bed, or one full day per week if trips are extended.
During these off hours, your nanny should be able to leave accommodations to explore on her own without families feeling abandoned or making her feel guilty about not being available. She needs genuine freedom to have personal time in new locations, not just technically off hours where she’s sitting in her room while you have fun activities she’s excluded from.
Consider building in full days off during extended trips. If you’re vacationing for three weeks, your nanny should have at least 2-3 full days where she’s completely off duty and can explore independently, rest, or do whatever she chooses without any childcare responsibilities.
Address what happens with downtime activities. If you’re at resorts with pools, beaches, or activities and your nanny wants to use those facilities during off hours, can she? Some families feel awkward about their nanny using resort amenities even during her time off. Clarify this in advance so she knows what’s available to her.
Discuss whether she can have visitors or friends meet her during off hours if you’re traveling somewhere she knows people. Some families are comfortable with this, others prefer their nanny doesn’t have outside contacts during family trips. Neither approach is wrong, but it needs to be discussed rather than assumed.
Be realistic about how much freedom is genuinely possible during travel. If you’re staying in a small vacation rental with shared spaces and your nanny’s “private” room is next to children’s rooms where they’ll hear her coming and going, her ability to have true off time is limited. Acknowledge these restrictions and compensate appropriately rather than claiming she has plenty of personal time when realistically she’s captive to your family’s presence constantly.
Accommodation and Privacy Considerations
Accommodation arrangements during travel dramatically affect how well trips work for everyone. Nannies need private space that’s genuinely private, not children’s rooms where she’s sleeping on a pull-out while still responsible for them.
Your nanny should have her own room with a door that closes and locks. This is non-negotiable for extended travel. She needs space where she can retreat during off hours, where she’s not available to children who want her attention constantly, and where she has basic privacy to rest without your family’s presence.
If you’re staying in hotels, book her a separate room rather than having her share spaces with your family or sleep in connecting rooms with children. The cost of that additional room is part of the expense of bringing a nanny on travel, not an optional luxury.
If you’re renting homes or vacation properties, ensure there’s appropriate private space for her. A bedroom in a basement apartment or separate guest suite works better than a bedroom off the main living area where she hears everything your family does and you hear everything she does.
Consider bathroom access and whether she needs her own bathroom or will be sharing. Sharing bathrooms with families or children eliminates privacy and makes it difficult for her to have genuine personal space during a trip.
Be thoughtful about common areas and whether your nanny can use them comfortably during off hours. If the only sitting area is the main family room and you’re gathered there watching movies, she can’t really relax in that space even if technically she could. This confinement to her bedroom during all off hours isn’t reasonable for extended trips.
Boundaries About Work Scope During Travel
Travel changes what nannies are able to do for children, but it shouldn’t dramatically expand scope beyond childcare into household management or personal assistant tasks unless that’s explicitly negotiated with appropriate compensation.
Your nanny is responsible for the children during her work hours, including managing their needs in new environments, supervising them during activities, maintaining routines as much as possible while traveling, and handling childcare logistics like packing their bags for daily outings.
She is not automatically responsible for your personal packing, managing household tasks beyond children’s immediate needs, handling complex travel logistics, booking reservations, or functioning as a general assistant during the trip unless you’ve hired her for a family assistant role and compensated accordingly.
Many families unconsciously expand expectations during travel, asking nannies to help with things that aren’t typically part of their roles because everyone is traveling together and it seems natural to ask for help. “Can you just grab my sunglasses from the room?” or “Would you mind organizing these photos we took today?” seem like small requests, but they accumulate into significant scope expansion.
Establish boundaries before the trip about what’s within her role during travel versus what’s outside it. If you want help beyond childcare, discuss that explicitly and compensate appropriately for the expanded scope.
Address who handles children’s meals during travel. At home, your nanny might prepare all children’s meals. On vacation, families might eat out frequently or have different approaches. Clarify who’s managing meal logistics for children during the trip and what you expect from her regarding food preparation or supervision during meals.
Preparing Children for Travel Dynamics
Children need preparation for how having their nanny on vacation changes dynamics compared to being home, and they need to understand boundaries about her time and availability.
Discuss with children before traveling that even though their nanny will be with you, she’ll have time when she’s not working and they need to respect that she’s off duty during those hours. Children often struggle understanding why their nanny who’s physically present can’t play with them every waking moment.
Establish clear signals for when she’s working versus off duty that children can understand. This might be as simple as explaining that after 8pm she’s done working and they need to go to parents for anything they need, or that during certain hours each day she’s not available even though she’s at the same location.
Help children understand that vacation for your nanny looks different than vacation for them. They’re experiencing fun activities and new places with no responsibilities. She’s working in an unfamiliar environment with added logistics and constraints. This doesn’t mean she can’t enjoy aspects of the trip, but it’s not leisure time the way it is for them.
Address how children should interact with your nanny during off hours if they encounter her. They can certainly be friendly and say hello, but they shouldn’t monopolize her time or expect her to engage with them when she’s not working.
What Happens When Plans Change
Travel plans frequently change due to weather, opportunities, fatigue, or spontaneous decisions. Establish how these changes affect your nanny’s schedule and compensation before you leave.
If you decide you want to handle childcare yourselves for a day because you’re doing family activities, does your nanny still get paid for that day? The answer should be yes, because she’s guaranteed those hours and has given up alternatives to be on your trip.
If plans require her working additional hours beyond the agreed schedule, how much notice will you provide and how will overtime be compensated? Same-day requests for schedule extensions should be compensated at premium rates reflecting the lack of notice.
If the trip gets extended beyond the originally discussed duration, what happens? Does your nanny have flexibility to stay longer? Does compensation remain the same or adjust for the extension? What if she has commitments at home that prevent extending?
Discuss these scenarios in advance so you’re not negotiating during the trip when emotions and logistics complicate discussions.
The Reality Check Most Families Need
Many families envision extended travel with nannies as wonderful opportunities they’re providing. In their minds, they’re giving their nanny chances to see London, experience Paris, visit beaches she’d never afford on her own. They expect gratitude and enthusiasm.
From the nanny’s perspective, these trips often feel like intensive work marathons with limited genuine freedom, constant proximity to employers, no real time off to enjoy destinations, and situations where she’s compensated as though working her normal schedule despite giving up weeks of personal life to be available 24/7 in a foreign location.
Both perspectives are valid but incompatible without explicit discussion. The solution isn’t for families to stop bringing nannies on travel or for nannies to decline opportunities. The solution is honest conversation about expectations, generous compensation reflecting the actual demands and restrictions of travel, genuine time off that allows nannies to experience locations rather than just existing in them as perpetual employees, and boundaries that preserve some semblance of normal work-life separation even while traveling together.
Families who approach travel this way have experiences where nannies genuinely appreciate the opportunities, feel fairly treated, and provide excellent care in challenging circumstances. Families who assume travel is its own reward discover their nannies return exhausted, resentful, and sometimes actively looking for new positions that don’t involve the travel demands they just experienced.
The Seaside Nannies Perspective
At Seaside Nannies, we’ve placed nannies throughout Los Angeles and nationwide markets for twenty years, including many positions involving regular travel with families. The travel arrangements that work successfully are those where families understand travel fundamentally changes employment dynamics and requires explicit renegotiation of terms, not just extensions of standard agreements.
We tailor-fit every placement, which includes discussing travel expectations during the matching process and helping both families and nannies establish appropriate terms for travel before trips occur. Never automated, never one-size-fits-all. Clear advance planning about schedules, compensation, time off, and boundaries determines whether travel strengthens employment relationships through shared positive experiences or damages them through unmet expectations and resentment.
Extended family travel with nannies can work beautifully when approached with realistic expectations, generous compensation, genuine respect for nannies’ needs for privacy and time off, and explicit discussions about logistics before departure. The families who understand this have nannies who travel with them for years, building wonderful experiences together. The families who assume nannies should just be grateful for travel opportunities end up with conflicts, burned-out nannies, and questions about why what seemed like generous offers created so much resentment and stress.
