A 2025 report from global OTA Agoda stated that the hospitality sector needs to stay abreast of the trends rising from Gen Z preferences, proof that younger travellers have a say in the direction travel and tourism will take in the future.
The world has gone past the day when children were merely seen and not heard: social media has enabled younger generations to raise their voices and air their views, becoming influential in the development of various sectors.
In today’s feature, we look at how the opinions of children and teenagers are influencing global travel and tourism.
A different point of view
In 2021, a team from China’s Nanjing University published a report titled Children’s Tourist World: Two Scenarios wherein they presented how tourism serves as both a fun activity and a learning experience.
However, the abstract states a rather galling truth:
“Existing tourism practice centres on adults. For example, in China, children's tourism faces severe market anomalies: there is ‘more emphasis on demand than supply; more emphasis on adults than children; more emphasis on tourism than education.”
But the same study also noted at the time that China’s children's tourism industry stood on the verge of rapid growth despite the scarcity of good tourist products specifically geared toward their needs.
Most, according to the researchers, seem to consider children as little more than commercial cannon fodder, offering empty fun rather than meaningful, even educational, experiences.
Indeed, the report goes on to say:
“Children are being treated as common mass tourists; [imagine] a little child submerged in a tourist crowd, especially during the peak season. Families with children even criticise Shanghai Disneyland for crowding, poor services, excessively long queue times, and over-commercialised policies. The promotion of tourist places for children cannot truly satisfy the ‘real’ voice of Chinese parents who emphasise their children's education through tourism.”
In the years that have followed since the study was published, tourism still involves decisions made by adults, but now there is no reason why children should not be involved.
Indeed, the under-18 demographic has been shaping massive economic decisions for the industry, especially as many have become co-decision makers in the context of family and institutional travel.
They are no longer passive passengers: they have a say in where families go, what activities are booked, and how long vacations should last.
Likewise, hotels and airlines actively cater to their needs through child-friendly amenities, market-specific entertainment options, as well as family-centric tour or stay packages.
Also, with young adults and students traveling independently now a growing market of their own, experiences offered need to give them more time and opportunity to immerse themselves in local cultures.
What about the children of destinations?
The problem with the discussion of children in tourism is that it has been one-sided for many years.
It has only been recently that organisations such as World Vision are looking at the plight of children living in destinations.
Most tourism professionals forget that children make up large populations in tourist destinations, thus excluding their concerns from local tourism planning.
While tourism can provide education and broaden perspectives, host communities face risks like child labour, commercialised voluntourism which tends to exploit children by way of demeaning orphanage visits or trips into low-income regions, as well as the ongoing scourge that is sexual exploitation.
A 2021 study conducted in six European destinations also declared that tourism was a disruptive influence to family life for children in host cities or nations.
As the researchers put it:
“Tourism not only disrupts life in the community, but also family life. Studies suggest that families benefit from tourism financially, but that overall family relationships are deteriorating. For families where parents are employed in tourism, fatigue and incompatibility of schedules impose significant challenges to childcare and family functioning. Similarly, families in tourism-intensive destinations suffer from the disruption of relationships and the psycho-social development of individuals. This is because families, where parents work in the industry, do not have sufficient time to dedicate to their children and they tend to avoid social places with many tourists, as these places are where they would be connecting with tourists on a social level, which is what they wish to avoid.”
With that said, this side of the children in tourism divide needs to make younger residents stakeholders in the decision-making process or, at the very least, a sector of protective focus.
It is only by doing so that destinations can protect younger citizens without compromising the strength or integrity of tourism-centric initiatives.
