Fifteen people, thirty bags.

Count the party properly, and count it early

Every large arrival that goes wrong went wrong at the count. Somebody said twelve, then a married daughter joined with her husband and two children, then the grandmother's companion was added, then a nephew came for the second week. Fourteen became nineteen and nobody told the person booking the cars. The remedy is a single list, owned by one named person, with a row per human being, updated whenever anything changes and circulated in full each time.

The list needs more than names. For each person: passport nationality and number, date of birth, whether they need a visa as distinct from visa exempt entry, arrival flight and date, departure flight and date, mobility requirements, dietary requirements, and who they share a room with. That last column is the one families resist and the one that saves the most time, because room allocation for a large group is a domestic negotiation that should happen in the Gulf, in advance, and not in a hotel lobby with the luggage on the floor.

Household staff belong on the list as travellers with their own line, not as an afterthought. Their entry position is frequently different from the family's: a driver, nanny, cook or nurse holding an Indian, Filipino, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Ethiopian or Kenyan passport will in most cases need a visa applied for in advance, which takes time and cannot be arranged in the last fortnight. Establish this the day the trip is agreed.

The arrival order that protects the elders

The single most useful decision in a large arrival is the order in which people leave the airport, and the principle is that the least resilient members of the party leave first. In practice that means the grandparents, any wheelchair user, any recent patient, and the mothers with infants are in the first vehicle, which departs as soon as its own bags are on board rather than waiting for the whole party.

One competent adult stays behind with the remainder, the porters and the last bags. That person is the one who notices the missing suitcase, deals with the oversize belt and signs whatever needs signing. Everyone else is already in a car. The alternative arrangement, where the whole party waits in the arrivals hall until the last bag appears so that the convoy can leave together, keeps an eighty year old standing in an air conditioned hall for forty minutes for no benefit at all.

This requires two things booked in advance: enough vehicles that the first one can leave without stranding the rest, and a residence that can receive an advance party. A villa that will not open its doors until three in the afternoon defeats the whole plan, which is why the early check in or the day room is bought at booking rather than requested on the morning.

Vehicles and luggage maths

The commonest error in transport booking is treating luggage as a rounding error. A minivan that seats eleven does not seat eleven people with eleven suitcases; it seats eleven people with cabin bags, or six people with their checked luggage. Our working assumptions, which we would rather over provide against than under, are set out below.

Two rules follow. Never mix a full passenger load and a full luggage load in the same vehicle; book a separate luggage vehicle and let it travel behind. And keep households together in the same car, because splitting a mother from her children to balance the seat count creates a small unhappiness at the beginning of every journey for the rest of the week.

Room blocks and the domestic geography

A large family in a hotel needs a block, and a block needs to be arranged as a shape rather than as a number of rooms. What we ask for, in this order: all rooms on the same floor or on two adjacent floors, connecting rooms confirmed in writing for families with young children, a suite for the grandparents positioned close to the lift, and if possible a room or suite that can act as the family's sitting room, where people gather in the evening instead of in a public lobby.

Confirmed in writing is the operative phrase. Connecting rooms are frequently marked as a request in a reservation system and are honoured only if the hotel happens to have them free at check in. For a family with four children under ten, that is not a detail; it decides whether the week works. We ask for the room numbers in advance and we check the floor plan.

For stays beyond a fortnight, and for most Gulf summer stays, a villa or a set of serviced apartments usually beats a hotel block. A villa gives the family its own kitchen, which resolves the food question permanently, its own walled pool, which resolves the privacy question, and a single front door, which resolves the supervision question for children. It also concentrates the housekeeping and the security arrangements in one place. Hotels remain the better answer for short stays, for city stays with daily appointments and for medical trips where proximity to the hospital outranks everything.

Comfort for the grandparents

The details that matter to elderly travellers are unglamorous and cheap: a room close to the lift rather than at the end of a corridor, a walk in shower rather than a step over bath, a bed at an ordinary height, reading light that can be worked without instructions, and a route from the room to the dining area that does not involve stairs. Ask the property about each of these specifically. A hotel that says yes to all five is worth more to a three generation family than a hotel with a better view.

Medical proximity is the other consideration. For any party travelling with an elderly member, know the nearest private hospital, its address written in Thai for a driver, and whether the family's insurance settles directly with it. Bumrungrad International, Bangkok Hospital and Samitivej are the principal private hospitals for international patients in Bangkok, all with Arabic language support in their international departments, and knowing which one is nearest to the residence before anything happens is a five minute task that occasionally matters a great deal.

The second wave

Large families rarely travel as one aircraft. A father arrives a week early for meetings, the students arrive when term ends, an aunt joins for a fortnight in the middle. Plan for waves explicitly rather than treating each as an exception: a separate arrival plan per wave, each with its own car booking and its own TDAC filing timed to its own arrival, and one person holding the master calendar.

Departures deserve the same treatment and get it less often. Fifteen people leaving on three different flights over four days requires as much car planning as the arrival did, and it happens at the end of the trip when everyone is relaxed and nobody is thinking about logistics. We write the departure plan at the same time as the arrival plan, in the same document, and revise it once a week.

Confirm entry requirements for every passport in the party, including household staff on non GCC documents, with the Royal Thai Embassy or Consulate in your country well before departure. Confirm room configurations, connecting rooms and accessibility features in writing with the property, and confirm assistance requirements with the airline at booking.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.