Determination of the touristic experiences of the children participating in cultural-based tourism

Cultural-based tourism is a type of tourism in which all kinds of tangible and intangible attractions belonging to cultures in different parts of the world are an important source of motivation. Tourist experiences have become an important research topic as today's travelers visit historical or modern cultural items to meet their cultural needs. The main purpose of this research is to determine the touristic experiences of the children participating in cultural-based tourism. In the research by adopting a postmodern approach, it has been tried to be interpreted by revealing the meanings of the thoughts of the participants rather than generalizable results. Since individual experiences are in question, a qualitative research method has been applied with a phenomenological perspective loaded on subjective experiences. The sample group of the research consists of children who continue their education at secondary school level in Didim district of Aydın, determined by the "purposive sampling" method used in in-depth studies with high data density. At the end of a cultural trip with 35 child tourists, they were asked tos hare their experiences. In order to prevent systematic errors in obtaining the research data and to increase the validity and reliability of the study, more than one data collection method with triangulation method was used. Accordingly first of all, observation notebooks, which were determined as the main data collection tool, were distributed to each participants and they were asked to write down their experiences at the end of the trip. Afterwards, each child tourist was expected to share their favourite photos at the end of the cultural tour. In addition, an anthropologist accompanied the group during the cultural trip and observed the experiences of the child tourists. With the face to face interview with the anthropologist at the end of the trip, the cultural codes of their experiences were tried to be analyzed. By applying content analysis to the written data of the research, the expressions that could answer the research questions were coded and the themes were created from codes with similar meanings and gathered under different dimensions. Accordingly, a total of 4 dimensions and 20 themes have emerged that explain the experiences of the children participating in cultural-based tourism. A semiotic analysis was made according to Pierce's Semiotic Triangle Model for a total of 17 photographs shared by child tourists, and it was checked whether they were consistent with the statements in the observation notebooks. As a result of the analysis of all the data, it was revelaed that the child tourists had a positive cultural tourism experience in general, and they stated that the attractiveness of tangible cultural assets, various information about the places they visited and the quality of the service provided had an impact on their experience. It is thought that the results obtained in the research will contribute to stakeholders such as travel agencies, tourist guides, food and beverage businesses, museum and ruins and local goverments. KEYWORDS: Cultural-Based Tourism, Child Tourists, Touristic Experiences, Child-Friendly Tourism.