Adults are reliably sniffy about hotel mascots right up until the moment a three-year-old spots one across the breakfast terrace and completely loses their mind with joy. Then the whole family is up and following a person in a bear costume across a lawn, and the parents are laughing, and the picture ends up as the screensaver for a year. The hotels in this collection have built the mascot into the daily life of the property rather than wheeling it out for a photograph. Think a character with a name and a story the children learn, appearances on a published schedule so a child can look forward to it, a role in the kids' club and the evening entertainment, and often a bedtime visit that becomes the single most requested thing of the week. The best of them extend it into books, drawings, and a farewell moment on the last morning. Austrian, South Tyrolean, and Bavarian Kinderhotels invented this and still do it best, with mascots that generations of the same family have grown up with. For children under about seven, this is a bigger draw than the pool. Below are the top family hotels with a mascot, sorted by overall score.