Visiting Family and Friends Tourism

Visiting family and friends (VFF) tourism, also called visiting friends and relatives tourism, is the practice of traveling to familiar or unfamiliar places for the purpose of meeting people who are personally esteemed or valued. VFF is considered to be among the oldest manifestations of travel. VFF tourism involves notions of movement, dispersion, and distancing. By implication, therefore, such travels are undertaken with the explicit intent of maintaining and/or strengthening far-flung relationships. Even in a world where communications and technologies permeate almost all settings of contemporary life, journeys to places where family, friends, and relatives have relocated can serve to reforge these important social connections. Past tourism literature has long undervalued the social [Page 1409]and economic contributions of VFF tourism. As a result, investigations of ...