No one asks the children, right?

Modern tourism planning and development of a destination should include input from all levels of society, including diff erent age groups and varying interest groups within a local community. However, it is very rare that, in the process of participatory planning, youths and school groups are invited to express their views on development plans or have the opportunity to take an active part in decisionmaking. In this study, a nonverbal semantic diff erential was used in order to learn about how children in Slovenian primary schools view tourists and tourism. A sample of students from three primary schools located in developed, semi developed and poorly developed tourist destinations completed an "activity book" containing questions and a methodology for drawing a picture of "tourists", "hosts", and "children's parents' perception of tourists". Th is study showed that children from regions where tourism is highly developed have signifi cantly diff erent attitudes toward tourists than children living in regions where tourism is not as developed. However, the study also takes a perspective of the importance of sustainability in the tourism off er and how this may aff ect the views of children & youth in general and in diff erent regions in particular.