Abstract

This is the first book to explore research on visiting friends and relatives (VFR). In many countries VFR is the largest single travel-related market and for some regional economies accounts for over half of all tourism flows. In assembling an international collection of quality VFR-related research the editors present the profiles, characteristics, opportunities and behaviours of VFR travel for the benefit of researchers, industry practitioners and educators. This holistic and international approach to understanding VFR travel provides a state of the art understanding of the context, dynamics and implications of VFR travel and will be an essential resource for postgraduate students, researchers and also practitioners. 

Elisa Backer is Associate Professor at Federation University Australia and is on the editorial board of nine journals. Her main research interests are VFR travel, destination marketing, partial industrialisation in tourism, family tourism and social media.

Brian King is Professor and Associate Dean at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and is joint editor-in-chief of the journal Tourism, Culture and Communication. His research focuses on tourism marketing with an emphasis on cultural dimensions and emerging markets, tourism and migration, international education and tourism.

Finally, a much needed book that explores the vitally important, but underappreciated area of VFR travel has been published. The book adopts a global perspective combining chapters that ground VFR travel well within existing tourism studies with case studies from almost every continent and deeper pieces conceptualizing. A book on this topic is long overdue and this book does not disappoint.

This book seeks to examine the social and economic importance of the VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) market, and it does so successfully. Global examples are provided, and nuanced differences made – such as even questioning why the ‘F’ and the ‘R’ are grouped together in the all too familiar acronym ‘VFR’ when such distinct differences exist between families and friends. This book is a welcome addition to the tourism literature for the contribution it makes on what has thus far been a relatively under-researched area.

I would like to congratulate the editors and authors who contributed to this much needed book publication for highlighting an underappreciated but vitally important area of tourism research. (...) Most of the contributors of this edited book are themselves well established researchers in this area, and along with emergent researchers from around the world, doing a fine job in breaking down all those misconceptions about VFR travel.