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This paper makes a contribution to the exploration of the travel type “Visiting friends and relatives (VFR)”, which is a relatively new field of research. The demarcation and the differences between VFR and other types of trip are the focus of attention of this study. Thus the research goal is to delineate the linking up of VFR with other travel types. Using data from an extensive and representative travel survey covering 2,000 households and more than 11,000 trips, this study found that about one third of the Swiss VFR travelers use commercial accommodation. Although researchers have found in other studies, that VFR type travelers tend on spending more money on meals and catering this could not be confirmed. It was also found that VFR travelers do not have a higher duration of holidays than other travelers. Besides this study determines that VFR is a truly independent travel type. Therefore it has to be looked at separately and not in connection with other travel types.

This paper aims to present the host experience of student hosts in Hong Kong, a popular educational destination for international students from mainland China and other countries. This study examines the interconnection between the experience-based and sociocultural dimensions of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel, considering the overall host experience, the host–guest relationship and post-hosting changes in perception of both the VFR experience and destination.

This research adopts a qualitative approach to compare the experience-based and sociocultural dimensions of VFR travel considering international university students as VFR hosts in Hong Kong, taking a student sample from both mainland Chinese and overseas students. Based on a voluntary sampling approach, the research team had face-to-face interviews with the students that agreed to participate. The interviews were conducted voluntarily and anonymously and included those students who had hosted any friends or relatives in the past 12 months. A total of 26 interviews were successfully completed, including 10 mainland Chinese and 16 non-mainland Chinese students.

The results confirm that the VFR host experience is generally shaped by an integration of internal characteristics (sociocultural characteristics of both hosts and visitors) and external environment (urban infrastructure and tourism resources). The two groups distinctively express their host experience that shows some areas of cultural barriers and geographical proximity.

The limitations of this research mainly lie on its relatively small sample size because of constraints in accessing the contact information of international students across universities. These shortcomings should be improved by adopting a research design that uses other sampling approaches, such as snowball sampling, to include a wider scope of students from different local universities, or convenience sampling, to interview and compare responses of international students from various educational destinations. Alternative data sources may be considered, for example, through user-generated contents from online and social media platforms that contain sharing of students as hosts.

The geographical and cultural proximities influence VFR tourism development and social construction of values and the consequent hosting behaviour. The unique role of international students should be further explored, especially in the Asian context. The outcome of VFR travel must be evaluated and studied more from cultural and personal dimensions than economic gain, which should be relevant to host perspective such as improved quality of life, social ties and place attachment and psychological benefits. The changing risk perception caused by the COVID-19 pandemic may be examined through some forms of travel intention.

Firstly, the destination marketing organisations of the educational destination should address the difficulty faced by student hosts in terms of external attributes such as local culture, urban infrastructure, tourism resources and information accessibility. Secondly, to target the hosts, some specific VFR-related products and services may be developed for international students through local tertiary institutions such that the role of hosts as ambassadors can be facilitated and enhanced. Thirdly, the functional role of international students can be distinctive based on their unique network, activities and knowledge constructed upon learning during the period of education.

The studentification of many educational destination cities, the dynamism of the role of international students as VFR hosts and their cultural differences between places of origin have provided an opportunity for deepening the understanding of VFR tourism.

This paper aims to examine the personal meanings of hosting experiences of first-generation immigrant families, particularly Filipino mothers in New Zealand, with their visiting relatives (VRs) from the Philippines by using the conceptual lens of hospitality.

Through a qualitative approach, a multi-sited fieldwork was carried out to examine kinship ties that bind immigrant-host families in New Zealand with their VRs from the Philippines. Results of in-depth interviews of immigrant-host mothers on their recollections of family visits were thematically analysed.

The main drivers that shape the hosting experiences of the research participants are modelling filial piety, fulfilling cultural expectations and strengthening family bonds. These main drivers enable sustaining intergenerational ties that unite the mother’s families in the Philippines and those in New Zealand.

The study elucidates the complex dynamics of culturally connected and motivated domestic hospitality, where the mother is the main protagonist and orchestrator. This dominance is often subdued, and thus, marketing for family often misses the mark. While the study has a small sample size and therefore lacks representativeness, qualitative accounts have produced an enriched cognitive schema that would enable an interesting way of examining the phenomenon.

This study reveals that matrilineal influence on family tourism among migrant Filipinos in New Zealand is strong and culturally influenced. Further studies may be done with families from other cultures and families. From a practical perspective, the findings suggest the importance of marketing tourism or hospitality products that facilitate visiting friends and relatives’ travel through domestic hospitality.

This research calls for reforms in the way family tourism is marketed. While commercial imperatives did not drive this research, findings indicate that certain cultures adhere to the wisdom of mothers on making the final decision on how hospitality has to be extended and manifested.

In the context of family tourism, inadequate research has been undertaken to examine the perspectives of women and their role as host in the travel of VFR. This study purports to fill in the gap in literature related to hosting experiences of women in the context of family tourism and VFR travel and to consider the voices of women in their new homeland.

This paper provides an overview of the visiting friends and relatives category in international tourism researchover the last decade. It was delivered as a keynote paper at the international conference, “VFR Tourism: Issues and implications” held at the Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, in October 1996.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of paid accommodation by international visitors who also stay with a friend or relative in another destination.

This paper conducts analysis of secondary data to look at the proportion of person nights in paid accommodation attributable to visitors who also stay with a friend or relative in another destination, and comparison of different visitor groups and their likelihood to use paid accommodation.

Results show that 14.5 per cent of all person nights spent by international visitors to Canada in paid accommodations were attributable to people who also stayed with a friend or relative in another destination. This proportion is higher for destinations outside of the largest cities and varies by source market.

This paper is limited the structure of the secondary data set, which does not separate visiting friends from visiting relatives, and does not capture host behaviour.

This paper has implications for destination marketers and tourism businesses as a source for reflection on drivers of their local and international business.

This paper helps position residents in a more central role regarding tourism in their regions and should encourage marketers and service providers to appreciate and engage residents as hosts.

This paper offers an original position by combining concepts from visiting friends and relatives and multi-destination travel that provides a foundation for further research in this area.

The chapter aims to examine the interrelationships between aviation and Asian inbound tourism demand to Australia. First, the chapter introduces key factors in the economics of tourism demand and the empirical work in assessing the aviation–tourism demand relations. Based on 2005–2016 annual time series data across 12 of Australia’s main Asian markets, a dynamic panel regression model is applied to empirically examine the factors influencing tourism demand including exchange rates and disposable income. Using a generalized method of moments approach, the study accounts for the endogenous relations between levels of international air services availability (proxied by seat capacity) and tourism demand. The results suggest, on average, the generative effect of aviation exists albeit with small magnitude (0.1–0.5% increase in tourism demand per 100,000 additional seat capacity). The chapter concludes with a discussion on the shifting inbound tourism balance toward Asia and the implications for aviation policy to meet the high Asian tourism growth targets.

Prior reports on theory and research focusing on describing and explaining national cultural influences on purchase and consumption behavior use a net effects approach (i.e., theory and analysis relying on main and interaction effects via statistical analysis). Theory and research in this chapter advances qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of a configuration perspective of culture's consequences on consumption behavior. This research informs the view that national cultures represent causal recipes (conjunctions) of cultural values; the study of main and interaction effects offer meager representations of national culture's consequences in comparison to adopting a cultural configuration stance. The configuration research here includes transforming Hofstede's country cultural scores into fuzzy set values and applying Boolean algebra to estimate the relevancy of alternative cultural configurations for each of 14 nations to consuming experiences during visits to Australia. The findings support primary and additional hypotheses that specific cultural configurations are sufficient (but not necessary) for describing substantial culture's consequences on consuming tourism experiences. For example, the animus (i.e., Carl Jung's unconscious masculine personality-force) configuration — the combination of high power (P), high individualism (I), high masculine (M), and low uncertainty avoidance (∼U) (i.e., P·I·M·∼U) — is sufficient in indicating not-shopping-for-gifts while visiting Australia. Western national cultures (e.g., United States) have higher fuzzy set scores than Eastern national cultures (e.g., Japan) for the animus configuration.

COVID-19 pandemic crisis has led the scientific community in continuous efforts to estimate its impact on tourism. UNWTO predictions indicated a decline in international tourist arrivals and the respective loss in revenues generated by tourist activity for the first year of the pandemic. Undoubtedly, such an impact may not be the same for every country, especially on a domestic level. In fact, the recovery process upon COVID-19 suggests domestic tourism as the driving force. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the tourist behavioral intentions after the first outbreak of COVID-19 with evidence from the Greek market.

A primary survey with questionnaires distributed via online channels (email and social media) has been undertaken to focus on the travelers’ preferences when it comes to the main parts that compose the holiday travel (destination, transport mode, accommodation type). Additionally, there were questions regard to their perceptions on the international norms of health protection against the virus.

The results of the survey illustrate some prima facie evidence of tourist behavioral intentions of Greeks, upon a statistical analysis, which indicates preference in domestic tourism and personalized services, issues related with travel costs and health safety awareness, toward tourism recovery process and customers’ reengagement and trust to the tourism businesses and destinations.

As Greece is a popular destination that includes a plethora of tourism cities, this paper illustrates the intentions of Greeks toward tourism activity upon pandemic crisis, when it comes to their travel preferences, as well as their perceptions on health and safety protocols applied in destinations and tourism businesses.

As the current Coronavirus 2019 pandemic eases, international tourism, which was greatly affected by the outbreak, is gradually recovering. The attraction of countries to overseas tourists is related to their overall performance in the pandemic. This research integrates the data of vaccination of different countries, border control policy and holidays to explore their differential impacts on the overseas tourists’ intention during the pandemic. This is crucial for destinations to built their tourism resilience. It will also help countries and industry organizations to promote their own destinations to foreign tourism enterprises.

This study proposes an analysis based on panel data for ten countries over 1,388 days. The coefficient of variation is used to measure monthly differences of Chinese tourists’ intention to visit overseas country destinations.

Results show that, for tourist intention of going abroad: border control of the destination country has a significant negative impact; daily new cases in the destination country have a significant negative impact; domestic daily new cases have a significant positive impact; holidays have significant negative impact; daily vaccination of the destination countries has significant positive impact; and domestic daily vaccination have negative significant impact.

First, there is a large uncertainty in studying consumers’ willingness to travel abroad in this particular period because of unnecessary travel abroad caused by the control of the epidemic. Second, there are limitations in studying only Chinese tourists, and future research should be geared toward a broader range of research pairs.

First, from the government perspective, a humane response can earn the respect and trust of tourists. Second, for tourism industry, to encourage the public take vaccine would be beneficial for both the tourism destination and foreign tourism companies. The same effect can be achieved by helping tourists who are troubled by border control.

First, this research provides suggestions for the government and the tourism industry to deal with such a crisis in the future. Second, this study found that vaccination has a direct impact on tourism. This provides a basis for improving people’s willingness to vaccinate. Thirdly, this study proves suggestion for the destinations to build tourism resilience.

This study analyzes the unique control measures and vaccination in different countries during the pandemic, then provides suggestions for the tourism industry to prepare for the upcoming postpandemic tourism recovery. This study is valuable for improving the economic resilience of tourism destinations. Additionally, it helps to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different restrain policies around the world.