Editorial: Children in Tourism

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as ‘every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child’. Of the world’s population, nearly a third (31%) are aged under 18, of whom the vast majority (87%) inhabit regions of the world that are commonly described as the Global South— the lower- and middle-income countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (https://data. unicef.org/). Children thus represent a significant proportion of the world’s population, not only growing up in the communities affected by tourism but also influencing and participating in holidays with their families and beyond. Traditionally, research has mainly focused on family tourism with data generated from parents/adults. However, in recent years, there has been increasing attention on the tourist experiences of children inclusive of their voices and acknowledging their roles as social agents within their families (e.g., Gram et al., 2019; Pomfret, 2021). A shift away from Western-centric discourses in the last decade has resulted in increasing family tourism research in Asia (e.g., Li et al., 2023). Yet, much of the children and family tourism research globally focuses on the wellbeing and benefits of traveling for children to the detriment of more problematic issues.