Inside: A Morning Of Conversation On Why Family Travel Is the Greatest Gift

Family travel has changed. The most memorable holidays are no longer measured by how much you can fit into an itinerary, but by the moments that stay with you once you’ve returned home. Sandy feet at breakfast, an impromptu boat trip, and the freedom for children to explore, discover and just be children.

Few understand this better than Scott Dunn, whose approach to family travel centres on creating holidays where parents genuinely switch off and children thrive. Thoughtfully designed kids’ clubs, hands-on experiences and itineraries someone else has already thought through mean less time spent planning and more spent on the trip itself. To explore this shift towards more intentional family travel, The Mini Edition partnered with Nexus Club London for an intimate breakfast conversation. The private members’ club in South Kensington takes an unusually family-friendly view of club life, which made it a fitting place to gather founders, parents and travel experts to discuss why travel might be one of the greatest gifts we can give our children.

On the first of July, The Mini Edition and Scott Dunn took over Ronnie’s Bar at Nexus Club London. With dark wood underfoot, burgundy banquettes and marble café tables, the space is framed by artwork from the Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood, who owned the building in its former life as the Harrington Club. Against that backdrop, Jake Kuit dressed the room in a bold, painterly palette of hot-pink and deep-red gerberas, red and blush roses, and anthuriums in scarlet, green and the palest pink; frilled hydrangeas, some edged in magenta and others in antique green, sat among arching pink cymbidium orchids and a haze of burgundy smoke bush. Each place was set with a scalloped Addison Ross charger, with portable lamps casting burgundy accents along the table.

As guests – a gathering of parents, founders and content creators – settled in, the Nexus kitchen sent out coffee, pastries and a proper brunch, the menus designed by Charlotte Wilmore and printed by Leeming Brothers. Eggs Royale was, by some margin, the order of the morning, with eggs Florentine and Benedict, avocado toast, and fried chicken and waffles for the bolder appetites. The room was full of familiar faces from food, fashion and wellness, snapped by photographer Roberta Facchini: Bake Off’s Manon Lagrève; founders Eshita Kabra-Davies of By Rotation, actor Aimee Kelly; content creators Laura Coleman, Sian Lilly and Rita Farhi; editor Cally Squires; and sculptor Sadie Clayton.

The conversation, hosted by Rosalyn Wikeley, The Wedding Edition’s Travel Editor, set out to chart a shift: away from the “fly and flop” holiday and towards trips designed to connect rather than simply switch off. Wikeley, who has reviewed several of Scott Dunn’s Explorers Kids Clubs across Europe, from the Alps to Daios Cove in Crete, opened on how motherhood changes the rhythm of travel without dimming the appetite for it, and on children becoming part of the adventure.

Scott Dunn has been making that case for a while: Founded in 1986, the operator has run its Explorers clubs for more than 30 years, placing independently qualified, in-house-trained childcare inside five-star resorts in age-banded groups and strict ratios, with the youngest babies looked after two to one. Kirsty, the company’s head of marketing, discussed how luxury family travel is moving away from excess and towards experience and cultural immersion; Chessie King, the content creator and author, raised the question of what being present on a holiday now looks like; and Alice Liveing, the fitness coach and author, took up the emotional side of travelling as a parent – the small rituals that keep a parent anchored away from home.

As the morning wound down, there was time to swap travel plans before guests left with gifts – SPFs and cryo face masks from 111Skin, and mini backpacks, water bottles, hats and postcards from Scott Dunn’s Explorers Club – in no big hurry, as the school run was still a few hours off.