Children have an important place in the family travel market as they have a strong influence on holiday decisions and their satisfaction can directly affect their parents’ satisfaction and future behavioural intentions. To attract this market and provide child tourists with a satisfying holiday experience, it is important to better understand their motivations and preferences. The aim of this research is to identify children's motivations and preferred destinations and activities in family tourism context. In this qualitative study, where children's voices were taken into account by giving them the opportunity to express their dream family holiday experience ‘drawing’, one of the widely preferred child-friendly techniques to reveal children's perspectives, was used. A total of 103 literate children aged 6–17, residing in five different cities in four regions of Turkey, participated in the research. The data were analyzed using the visual content analysis technique in Maxqda software. The results show that children's family holiday motivations can be divided into four categories: family bonding, escaping and exploring new places, activities and play, rest and relaxation. Additionally, the activities that children seek in destinations include opportunities for group activities, activities related to nature, cultural experiences, and built environment experiences.
