Forgot Something? The Traveling Parents' Guide to Baby Gear Rental.

Renting baby gear is a lot more convenient than schlepping a play yard, stroller, and feeding chair on a trip. Renting can save you space in your luggage, help you avoid some of those checked bag fees, and allow you to use items that would be impossible to bring on a road trip or a plane (like our bassinet).

Renting can also save you from having to buy items that you’ll only need for your trip, like beach toys for a beach vacation or a hiking backpack for trekking the trails. Baby equipment rental companies can make it easy to have the essentials you need shipped to or dropped off at your destination, whether it’s a hotel, a vacation rental, or a relative’s home.

Luckily, you can rent almost any type of baby gear, including bassinets, cribs, strollers, play yards, car seats, high chairs, toys, and bouncers. You can even find seasonal and specialty rentals like beach tents and outdoor blankets. But it’s important to do your research in advance to understand what baby items are best to rent (or not rent).

Depending on what you’re renting and where you’re going, you most likely have a few baby gear rental options.

Renting directly from your travel accommodations: Your hotel or vacation rental may offer the option to rent a crib or play yard directly for free or an additional fee upon request. Some family-oriented locations and resorts (think Orlando or the Caribbean) may have rental packages available—ask when you book your stay. 

Renting from a baby gear rental company: Wherever families travel on vacation, you’re likely to find a number of companies that specialize in vacation rentals of baby gear. Search for “baby gear rentals in” and your destination, and you may find a mix of local as well as national rental providers. MountainTot, for example, is a local baby gear rental company servicing ski resorts in Colorado, while BabysAway services 33 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C.

Some baby gear rental companies have warehouses in popular destinations and deliver items locally. Some companies, such as BabyQuip and Traveling Baby Company, act similarly to Airbnb or Uber, where you rent the things you need from a local independent partner at your destination, and they bring them right to your accommodations. 

I talked to experts in baby safety to learn what parents should consider before renting baby gear. Here are a few questions to ask as you do your research.

Have you checked for recalls on your available products? Holly Choi, a baby and toddler safety expert and co-founder of Safe Beginnings First Aid, recommends asking your rental company: “What is your procedure for checking for recalls?” Rental companies should not be renting out gear that has been recalled, so it’s a good question to ask up front. Choi says that parents can also do their own recall research on the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website.

How do you take care of the items between clients? “What do they do with the items between when they get returned and when they get rented out again?” Alisa Baer, MD, also known as The Car Seat Lady says. That can help you “find out what their process is for cleaning, and making sure that the product is still in safe working order.” Choi also recommends asking, “How do you inspect [the item] when it’s returned for any kind of faults?”

How is the item cleaned? There is a right way and wrong way to clean certain baby products, and parents should ask rental companies about their cleaning processes. “Some of the things they do to clean the items, like steam cleaning, are totally fine to do on most items, except car seats,” Baer says. “Hot steam is very dangerous to use on car seats. It can degrade the product in a way that it might not hold up in a crash. So the concern also with renting [car] seats is that the places that take more care of their items might actually be harming the car seat in the process of caring for it. Basically on the car seat, you just want to use room temperature water for cleaning—not steam and not chemicals or other cleaning solutions.”

Is the item guaranteed to be there when you arrive? Whether you plan for the rental gear to be delivered to your airport, hotel, or elsewhere at your destination, make sure that your rental is guaranteed to be there and available when you arrive, Baer says. When you rent a car seat from rental car companies, availability is first-come, first-served—so even if you request a car seat ahead of time, if they run out by the time you arrive, you can be out of luck.

What are your delivery options? Depending on what you’re renting, you may want your gear delivered to a specific place. For example, if you’re renting a double stroller, it may be nice to have it waiting for you at the airport. Check to see where the rental company will deliver—some may only deliver equipment to a hotel or vacation rental rather than an airport or car rental location.

What is your cancellation policy? If there’s anything parents know all too well, it’s that plans change and schedules can go out the window. With that in mind, it’s always good to check the cancellation and refund policies with your rental company so that you know what your options are if your travel plans are thwarted. And along those lines, check to see what happens if your schedule changes. If you were planning to retrieve your stroller rental from a company at the airport, but your flight is 5 hours late, how do you rearrange the meet-up time?

What are the reviews from other renters? I’ve always found other parents to be the best resource on baby gear. So check out reviews that other parents have left, especially making sure that the rented items arrived on time and in good condition.

Are there delivery and cleaning fees or a minimum order amount? While a crib or play yard may be free to rent with your hotel stay, most other types of rentals will come with a price—but how much? Check the company’s website for delivery fees, cleaning costs, service charges, or other fees that can add up. Additionally, some companies have a minimum order amount or rental period, so make sure those fit your needs.

So what gear is a good idea to rent when you’re traveling? And what items are better to bring your own? Here is what the experts recommend.

Strollers: Renting a stroller can be a great option, especially if you’re doing more walking on your trip than you do on a normal day. Kids’ little legs get tired easily, even if they aren’t normally using a stroller anymore. “If you need a stroller and you don’t want to bring one with you, then renting makes sense,” Baer says. A tip: Check out the online manual for your stroller rental in advance—that way you’ll know how to fold, unfold, and recline it, especially if it’s a different brand or type of stroller than what you’re used to at home.

High chairs: Renting a high chair is a great way to save some space when traveling. Choi recommends checking for any missing parts and making sure the harness works. If the straps were removed for cleaning, make sure they’ve been put back properly, she says. Once you arrive and receive the feeding chair, “always make sure that the buckles buckle, and that they stay buckled when you tug on them.”

Nice-to-haves: There’s no shame in renting baby gear that makes traveling with a baby a little easier—like infant bathtubs, bouncers, and even toys. Some baby gear rental companies offer seasonal and specialty items, too—from snow sleds to beach tents.

Cribs, bassinets, play yards: When it comes to infant sleep, you can never be too careful. Choi says to make sure that the sleep equipment you’re renting is current. “Safety standards do change every few years,” she says about sleep gear. By renting the Snoo directly from the manufacturer, I felt more confident that the bassinet would be cleaned and delivered safely.

Baby gates: Choi says baby gates are good to rent, but don’t use them directly at the top of any stairs. “If we put a pressure-mount gate at the top of the stairs, that can not only fall down and lead to injury, but the mechanism of a child falling down the stairs with the gate can be worse than them just falling down the stairs on their own,” Choi says. She recommends getting a sense of what your vacation rental or destination property looks like in advance. “If there are stairs, is there a hallway before the stairs where you can put the gate further back? So that if the gate does fall down, it’s not falling down onto the stairs.”

Car seats: It can be difficult—or even impossible—to know if something is wrong with a rental car seat just by looking at it, so Baer advises that it’s always better to bring your own. “You won’t be able to look at the car seat and tell if it was involved in a crash, or the harness straps are misrouted from the last person who rented it, or it was steam-cleaned, or any other number of issues that could affect the seat’s ability to protect your child,” she says. Choi agrees, and suggests not renting any car seats from a rental car company.

So how did my own Snoo rental experience end up?

I made the rental reservation on Nov. 2, and the earliest date I could book for it to ship was Nov. 13. With our arrival date of Nov. 18, I knew that would be cutting it close to the delivery date, but I hoped for the best.

The Snoo bassinet arrived the day after we did, which caused us some stress. Luckily, my in-laws had borrowed a play yard from some fellow grandparents down the street, so our daughter could sleep in there. But since my husband and I weren’t used to that product, neither of us slept well, each waking up throughout the night to check on her. Our daughter? She slept totally fine. But we all slept better the rest of the trip when we had our normal sleep routine.