Charting New Horizons: Eric Stoen of Travel Babbo

PETIT PROFILE

Dec 18

*Image courtesy of Eric Stoen / Travel Babbo*

When former healthcare executive, Eric Stoen, started sharing his family’s trips on Facebook in the early aughts, he had no idea he was pioneering the family travel influencer space. After being named the World's #4 Most Influential Traveler by Forbes, the World's Best Family Traveler by Fodor’s, and visiting all 7 continents in 2023, Eric is now preparing for his next big adventure: sending his oldest to college. Here, he shares his reflections on a travel-filled life.

What ignited your passion for family travel? When I was in college, I studied abroad in Italy for a year. I would jump on the train on the weekends and visit different countries and I loved the different cultures and people. My wife studied in France for a year in college, and after we got married, we traveled a lot, including a trip around New Zealand. When we had kids, there was no reason to stop traveling. We kept going and brought them along starting at around 6 months. Long flights weren't fun in the beginning. But every bad flight leads to good flights later when kids become used to it and know what to expect. We just powered through the bad travel experiences. Even with bad flights, you still end up somewhere amazing. We would slowly see how the kids were changing and benefiting from the travel, like never being picky eaters because they were exposed to lots of different foods. We would watch them get more confidence and learn things from trip to trip, and learn some words in different languages. There's no way to compare what our kids would be like if we had gone to Disneyland every year for our vacations instead of going all over the world, but I think it has definitely benefited them.

That's an incredible gift. How old are they today? 13, 16, and 18.

Why did you decide to start sharing your family travel experiences with others? I enjoyed posting about family travel on Facebook for family and friends and answering their questions, and it was fun seeing that I could actually inspire people. Maybe people weren't comfortable traveling abroad or doing that with their kids, or hadn't thought about specific destinations. When my daughter was 8, I took her to Antarctica and posted about it on Facebook, how it was amazingly kid-friendly, even thought it’s not someplace most people think about going with kids for a number of reasons. But it was just this winter wonderland and I thought people should consider Antarctica with kids, especially if budget is not a consideration. So I started a website and my very first blog post was about taking my daughter to Antarctica, just because I wanted more people to have that information and to get the word out since there were only a handful of kids on our ship. Shortly thereafter, I quit my job in healthcare — I had been in healthcare for 18 years — and I just kept going with my website while I was thinking about what I wanted to do for my next career, and the website took off. I never meant to be a travel writer or an influencer or anything like that. I fought even having an Instagram account for a while. I just wanted to inspire people. So that's how it started and that's how it's going about 9 years later. It's fun. I have over 270 blog posts that I've written and my goal is still just to inspire people to show them the cool places in the world that they can take their kids that maybe they haven't thought about.

How do you balance inspiring and informing? I try to tell the truth. If things don't go well, I talk about that. And if we don't love a destination, I talk about why we didn't love it. I think there are a lot of people out there that make it seem like everything is perfect — every destination is perfect and every trip is perfect — especially with Instagram. I don't like to be negative, but if we go on, say, a Disney cruise, and there are a lot of negatives to it and positives, I'll talk about that. I don't feel like a lot of other people do this, and I'm not sure why — maybe they want people to think their families are perfect, or they want Disney to like them because they're not complaining, or whatever their reasons. But I'd rather just tell people the good and the bad. I also don't have ads on my website because I don't like going to other websites with tons of ads, so I don't want to make people trudge through that on my website. I'd rather just focus on inspiring and informing.

What are some of your favorite destinations from across your travels that you'd recommend to families? Europe is so easy. We still love getting back to Europe every summer. Italy, Greece, France — we are always happy to keep returning to those countries. I don't think there's anywhere more perfect than a Greek island during the summer, especially if you find a Greek island without cruise ships so you don't have a lot of day-trippers, and you can just enjoy that lifestyle for a couple of weeks. You have beaches and tavernas, and it's just this amazing culture with totally unique places that have kept to their own unique attributes. You can't beat the Greek islands. Australia is also super easy with kids from a young age and it has really fun, crazy animals that you don't get to see in the US or elsewhere, unless you go to a zoo.

Any particular favorite Greek islands? We've grown to love Naxos. I discovered it through another travel blog ten years ago. When we took our kids, we were like “this is perfect.” It had everything going for it: there was one main town close to the airport and where ferries operated to and from the island. We could get a hotel that was within walking distance of everything. We’d usually rent a car. It's one of the larger Greek islands, so we'd run the car once or twice a trip and drive around a little bit, but otherwise almost everything we needed was walking distance with tons of restaurants, perfect beaches, and everything is close together. Paros is another really good one. It has two main towns, and it's not quite as convenient since the airport’s a little bit further away. But, again, no cruise ships. And you just have this perfect Greek vibe going on. I've heard great things about Milos. We’ve not been yet, but that's on our list.

Any Greek islands you don’t like? Almost every year we end up in Santorini and Mykonos, and we don't like them because they get so many day-trippers, like 8,000 to 15,000 people a day are coming off of cruise ships and crowding the little walkways and stores there. It's not fun to be there when all those cruise-goers are there. We usually are there because they have the best flights, so we'll fly into one, spend a night or two, and then take the ferry over to Naxos or Paros, or somewhere else, and then fly out of the other one. When we go to Santorini or Mykonos, I look up the cruise schedule to see how many ships will be in port with how many people. Mykonos and Santorini are charming when nobody's there, but otherwise, we try to avoid those islands.

What are your favorite places in Australia? Australia has so many different great places. We love Sydney, and it’s easy because it has these great wildlife parks in and right outside of town, like Featherdale, where you can hold koalas. Brisbane is the same. It has some great zoos. Australia Zoo is right outside of Brisbane. We've had really good experiences in Sydney and Brisbane with kids and with animal experiences.

What about your kids’ favorite places? All my kids are different. My oldest daughter has really loved Bali, and we've gone several times over the years. My son really liked Singapore from the first time we went, so we've gone back to Singapore several times. My youngest daughter loves Japan, so I've taken her to Japan a few times. There’s this really cool cycle where the kids talk about where they want to go based on something they read, learned, or heard, or saw on TikTok, and we go. Then that circles back and changes their lives a little bit, and maybe gives them some new skills or interests, which then informs future travel. So I love that.

But everywhere in the world has kids, right? So, you can take kids anywhere in the world. We obviously wouldn't go to a war zone. But you can go to to the middle of Africa and be absolutely fine and safe, and expose your kids to a different lifestyle, which is, I think, good for them long-term, and building their empathy and understanding of different cultures, and so many other things. So yeah, we have our favorites, and I have some some posts on my website about our favorite cities and our favorite countries. We've rated everywhere that we've gone just to try to figure out what we really like as a family. My wife and I loved our African safari, but maybe the kids didn't, so we give them their say and put that information out there for other families. But Greek islands are a family favorite, as is Australia, and Japan is always amazing with kids.

What is your travel style? We don't over-plan our travels. We like to go places and explore, and just see what happens. Then, we figure out what there is to do that sounds amazing and book it. But we don't come in with stuff scheduled every day. If we go to Paris for a couple of weeks, we may have one cooking class booked, and that's about it. And every day we'll just randomly pick a metro stop, take the metro there, explore some new area of the city, and then walk back to our apartment so that we're seeing different areas. A lot of that's memorable — not like in a “wow, that was amazing” way, but like “wow, that was a really, really enjoyable couple of weeks of just exploring and finding restaurants and new little things, and seeing why people love Paris” —because we're not just taking the metro from famous site to famous site and ignoring all the stuff in the middle that makes Paris special.

What are some peak experiences from your travels? The more adventurous activities, like paragliding to check into a hotel in Oman with my daughter, or spending a day at Angkor Wat in Cambodia with my son where we ended up just covered in dirt, or the trip we took to Qatar for one of the pre-World Cup matches. That was really fun because he got to see a lot of his favorite players from Liverpool. I also took him to the World Cup in Saint Petersburg, Russia. which was really special to him, given that he loved soccer. It has been fun figuring out what the kids’ passions are and then traveling based on that. Japan can be an intimidating country — there isn't a lot of English spoken or on signs. But after day 2 or 3, my daughter and I got more confident and we would just find restaurants that looked good based on a picture on their menu and walk in knowing we're just going to have to point to the food we wanted, then figure out how to pay at the end. There's nothing scary about it, it's just intimidating at the beginning. I've loved mini adventures like that — just getting past our hesitations and diving into new cultures.

Did the pandemic change how your family thinks about travel or the way you travel? From a personal perspective, I had been traveling a lot, building my brand, taking on campaigns and going to events and conferences around the world. A lot of things were during the school year, so I was leaving my family to go do this, and I was coming to the realization that I had been away from my family too much in building my website about family travel. So from a personal perspective, it was perfect timing to stop traveling for that time and just be at home. We did a lot of road trips to the US southwest and national parks, and all the cliche stuff during the pandemic. and it was great. I didn't mind not getting on a plane for a couple of years. We're in a neat area of California where we could just walk every day and be surrounded by orange groves and avocado orchards, and it’s super quiet and beautiful. I have friends who were stuck in small apartments in cities around the world and just had a miserable time, so we were quite lucky where we're based.

What are some of your favorite hidden gem destinations for families? That's so hard to say because, with Instagram now, you see most places in the world. I get the question a lot from new parents about where to go on their first trip with a one-year old, and I'm like, “go wherever you want to go.” Literally, whatever's on your list as parents, go and take your kid(s). I think Africa is amazing, especially safaris. That's not a hidden gem by any means, but I think it's one of the last continents that people may be comfortable traveling to with kids. But the safari lifestyle is incredible, going out and driving around for hours. Kids at almost any age can handle that because they're seeing giraffes out the window and elephants — it's like this huge scavenger hunt, just looking around and seeing what you find. There are ways safari operators make that fun for kids, with bingo cards where you get credit for animals that you see. And then you come back to the lodges in the evening, and it's just perfect. You have this amazing view and there are still animals around, with great food and relaxation time at the pool. It's super family-friendly, and I think more people should consider doing safari earlier on than they would have planned.

Anywhere else? Antarctica is amazing, if the budget fits your finances. I just took my 13-year-old daughter to Antarctica for her first time this year, so I've been twice now with two of my kids, and both trips were incredible. Vietnam is a great country that I think still has some stigma attached to it from the war 50 years ago, which is a shame because it has some of the best food in the world, it’s super safe and friendly, inexpensive, and easy to get around. Even hiring a car and driver-guide to take you to different places or arrange everything is not expensive compared to a lot of places in the world. In the Middle East, I like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. I don't love Dubai, but I love Abu Dhabi. Even in the summer, when it's hot, you can visit museums and find other things to do. It’s a very different desert culture that I don't think a lot of people consider visiting with kids. I went to Beirut a few years ago and loved it, and would take kids there in a heartbeat. Jordan is an amazing country and super interesting.

Any places you think are overhyped? Iceland and Costa Rica get so much hype, so everybody goes there with their kids because they're comfortable doing it, because everybody else is going there. In the case of Iceland they ignore the rest of Scandinavia. In the case of Costa Rica, they ignore Nicaragua and Panama, both of which are a lot cheaper than Costa Rica and have much to offer. That is one of my pet peeves, when everybody is going to the same place and just taking the same Instagram photos, like you see with Santorini. Don’t just pick your destination based on Instagram or based on other families, especially when it's easy to get off the beaten path and have a more interesting, less expensive experience because you don't have a lot of other tourists around.

What Scandinavian destinations would you highlight for families as alternatives to Iceland? I really enjoy Oslo. It has some cool museums, great parks, and is easy to walk around with neat pedestrian districts. Then you take the train a couple of hours, and you're in the fjords, and Bergen is a good launching off point for the fjords. So it's a little different than Iceland. Obviously, Iceland's unique with its snow, moss, and lava. It's almost monochromatic when you're driving around, but it has gorgeous waterfalls and everything else. There are just so many places in the world with gorgeous waterfalls, I don't know that everyone needs to fight high prices in Iceland in the summer to drive the same Ring Road and see the same waterfalls. Sweden is incredible. It's a little bit of a different vibe, but you still have the long daylight hours, and you can go to the forest and just pick berries and mushrooms, and have these really cool forest and coastline experiences in Sweden. In Denmark you have the original Legoland, if your kids want to do that. Copenhagen is a great Scandinavian city that's easy to walk around with great food and really good amusement parks. So yes, go to Iceland at some point, but I don't know that it needs to be prioritized. It's okay to go somewhere else.

You mentioned Vietnam — any tips there? Skip the Golden Hands Bridge. It's in the SunWorld Ba Na Hills theme park, and we didn't know that before we told our guide that we wanted to go there. So they dropped us off for a day at this horrible theme park just to see this bridge that we could barely walk across because it had so many people on it. It was not what Instagram made it look like — I should have done more research and figured that out. So if you’re near DaNang, you're a lot better off spending another day in Hoi An than going to see the Golden Hands Bridge. It was probably one of our worst travel days ever. At least it's a good story now, but it was horrendous.

Are you team hotel or team Airbnb? I understand why a lot of families really like Airbnb. But I have seen so many negative consequences from Airbnb, especially in Europe, where I have friends in apartments who used to love their apartment buildings because they knew their neighbors, and now half the units are rented out, and they have people coming and going who are rude and leave trash all over. It has absolutely killed the atmosphere. In places like Florence, Barcelona, Venice, the people that work in the cities can't afford to live in the cities anymore because everyone is buying up places to have as short-term rentals. So honestly, I think, Airbnb should be banned in a lot of cities because it has had this incredibly negative effect on the cities and the locals. It’s their city. As a tourist, you don't have any right to that city; as as a local, you do. There are places and circumstances when we will stay in short-term rental, but I would much rather base in a hotel, especially one where breakfast is included. We like to find boutique hotels, especially ones that are family-owned, where we can just sit and talk and learn about the city from the people who live there. In Venice, there's this hotel we found a decade ago called Al Ponte Antico. We would sit for hours and talk to the main desk guy and the owner of the hotel, and we got so many tips on Venice and what's going on in the city, and the negative ramifications from Airbnb. So even if we need two rooms, my inclination is always to book a hotel to know that we're not doing anything to further hurt the ability of the locals to live close to where they work.

Any favorite travel tips or advice for parents who are new to family travel? Reduce the likelihood that anything is going to go wrong. I know that's general, but there are all these little things that families can do to be more comfortable, to have a good, safe, and problem-free trip, starting with booking flights. Book the most direct flights that you can, and book the earliest flights in the morning that you can. Those flights are almost always on time so you're not going to miss connections. Even if you don't have a connection, you're still getting to your location, probably with your luggage, and probably with no delay, which is major, especially after the last year or two of increased travel snafus. Have somebody waiting at the airport for you to take you to your hotel. That way, you're not arriving somewhere that's foreign to you and trying to navigate taxi scams, and people coming up to you, and changing money. Be prepared for anything. We we have a little emergency travel pack that we've taken with us since our kids were born. Again, just know that, wherever you go, people there have kids, and tourists have been going there for years. You can do it. Each place you visit is cumulative and is going to give you confidence to go to the next places that are maybe a little bit wilder or more exotic. And if you can avoid problems or complications as you're planning travel, it just makes it that much easier to enjoy the trip.

What’s in your emergency travel pack? Obviously it's changed over the years. But it has stuff in there like blue painters tape that we use for everything, and ziplock bags, sharpies, scissors, kids medicine like Advil, Tylenol, Benadryl. We check it. We just throw that into the suitcase every time we're traveling, and know that if we need anything, it's probably in there. A frisbee is in there for parks. I have some tips on my website about what we have in our emergency pack. We no longer need swim diapers, luckily.