I’ll start with my cynical side: the Babymoon is to the travel industry what Valentine’s Day is to the greeting card industry, a manufactured ritual concocted to get consumers to spend money.
The difference (here’s my less cynical side) is that the Babymoon is a pretty great idea. A couple, expecting a baby, take off for a little relaxation and adult quiet time before their bundle of (screaming, crying, pooping) joy arrives. Who can argue with that?
My husband and I went to Chicago for a weekend when I was pregnant with our first child. We took an architecture tour by boat, strolled down Michigan Avenue (I remember feeling a magnetic force pulling us inside stores with sweet tiny baby things in the windows), ate at a fabulous restaurant one night, dined on Chicago pizza another night, sat in a park and watched people go by, slept late, indulged in dessert and generally enjoyed each other and the feeling that the most important thing that would ever happen to us was almost here. It was nice.
It was also simple.
Which brings me back to my initial point about manufactured rituals and forced consumerism. A Google search for “Babymoon Packages” produced 5,390 results—it seems that hotels have jumped on this trend faster than a pregnant woman scoops ice cream out of a container. The hotels also seem to be trying to outdo each other with silly perks. A free jar of pickles in your room? Come on.
As I personally thought Chicago provided a nice Babymoon getaway experience, I clicked on Illinois and found a package from the Four Seasons in Chicago. It offered a million little incentives, including a copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I think a man must have come up with this idea, since any woman far enough along to be Babymooning bought that book months ago. Some of the perks were really coupons. An example is you get a complimentary bassinet at Neiman Marcus with any $200 purchase of layette clothing in the children’s department.
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