Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.2 VFR Tourism and Relevant Concepts
2.2.4 The significance of VFR tourism
VFR travellers represent significant tourism markets in both domestic and international tourism (Hu, Morrison, & O’Leary, 2002; Pennington-Gray, 2003). Hay (2008) suggested that VFR tourism contributes to the local economy by increasing the awareness of local attractions among visitors, and spreading tourism in terms of both location and timing. Moreover, VFR trips can benefit local events because hosts are more likely to participate, or at least try to search for them and recommend them to their guests. This section addresses the importance of VFR tourism as described in the literature, in terms of both economic and sociocultural aspects. These two aspects are aligned with the two approaches of studying the VFR phenomenon (the marketing approach and the performance turn approach) explained earlier.
2.2.4.1 Economic aspects
The economic contribution of VFR tourism has often been neglected because of the assumption that VFR travellers use free accommodation provided by their friends and relatives (Backer, 2007; Griffin & Nunkoo, 2016). However, this view has been challenged by several studies indicating that VFR travellers have a significant economic impact on commercial tourism operations by staying in commercial accommodation and participating in a variety of regional activities (Braunlich &
Nadkarni, 1995; Griffin & Nunkoo, 2016; Moscardo et al., 2000). Moreover, while they might spend less on accommodation by staying with their friends and relatives, they spend more on shopping, meals and other activities (Lee et al., 2005).
Research also shows that some VFR travellers combine their main trip purpose of VFR with other purposes such as business and pleasure (Hu et al., 2002). In these cases, tourism revenue gained by the VFR travellers is expanded. As Dwyer et al.
(2014) suggested, the economic significance of VFR tourism could be underestimated if the money spent by residents who host their friends and relatives is not considered.
Likewise, Shani and Uriely (2012) pointed out that hosting friends and relatives may involve substantial expenditures including costs of visiting local attractions.
Receiving visits from friends and relatives can also be an encouragement for local hosts to undertake more tourist activities than they would normally. Accordingly, the economic contribution of VFR tourism is not only created by VFR tourists, but also
by the local hosts who are visited.
Although expenses from the hosts who receive visits from friends and relatives are not calculated in tourism accounts because they are not considered as ‘new’ money added into the local community, they have been generated from tourism activities within the region as a result of the VFR trips and its inclusion would enable a more complete estimation of the economic impact of VFR tourism (McKercher, 1996).
Arguably, in some cases, hosts may spend their holidays at home just because they have visitors staying with them (when they might have travelled elsewhere and, thus, spent money elsewhere), and their spending in these cases might, in effect, be additional spending in that local region or even country.
Furthermore, Duval (2003) indicated that VFR tourism accounts for a number of return visits from migrants. This view suggests that the economic significance of VFR tourism should also take into account the possibility of tourism revenue generated by potential VFR return visits. For instance, returning for a graduation ceremony is one of the common reasons for families’ and friends’ visits when international students complete their study. During such occasions, international students and their families and friends not only come to attend the ceremony but, often, also take the opportunity to travel and participate in various tourist activities (Shanka & Taylor, 2003).
2.2.4.2 Sociocultural aspects
In addition to potential economic contribution, VFR tourism is also likely to have an impact on its participants, both socially and culturally (Backer, 2019; Backer & King, 2017; Griffin, 2013b). Griffin (2014) noted a shift as to how the VFR phenomenon has been studied, from the traditional way that focuses on economic impacts and marketing implications (Braunlich & Nadkarni, 1995; McKercher, 1996; Seaton &
Palmer, 1997) to a more constructionist way that move towards an understanding of the VFR experiences for participants and host communities (Duval, 2003; Larsen, 2008; Larsen et al., 2007).
The sociocultural influence of VFR tourism on VFR visitors and those being visited is mainly driven by their pre-existing relationships. As noted previously, Larsen et al.
(2007) defined VFR tourism as a form of travel undertaken to be co-present with significant faces. According to these authors, physical co-present interaction is important to social relationships as it helps produce trust, enhance closeness and
potentially create pleasant memories of gatherings. Although virtual co-presence could contribute to reducing the perceived distance, it does not generate any physical interactions. Hence, the relationship closeness enhanced by virtual co-presence is not as powerful as in the case of physical co-presence. This is probably one of the reasons why Urry (2002) argued that virtual co-presence was unlikely to be a substitution for physical co-presence. Overall, VFR tourism can be important for the development and enhancement of social networks. VFR visits serve as a means of maintaining social and cultural ties with family members and friends in one’s native country (Duval, 2003). The visits are, at times, also the result of feelings of social obligation.
Increasingly, friendships and families can themselves have an international composition, which suggests that VFR tourism can involve participants from different cultures. Similar to other types of tourism, it creates a platform for the visitors and the hosts to interact and to exchange their cultural values. According to Shani (2013), VFR tourism offers significant social, cultural and political benefits to the migrant-sending regions. An example of a cultural benefit can be the case of migrants who might have assimilated into the culture of the host country and, subsequently, convey what they have learnt about the host culture to friends and families during their return visits. This shows that VFR tourism can enable cultural exchange and learning between participants.
Another potential sociocultural impact of VFR tourism is that it may enable its participants to feel at home while being away from their own home. Shani (2013) indicated that the nature of VFR tourism might influence the participants’ tourist experience on various aspects such as perceptions of ‘home’ and ‘away’, length of trip, purpose of visit (e.g., religious festivals, weddings, birthdays, funerals or homeland trips), and the strength of social ties between hosts and guests. This suggests a potential connection between ‘home’ feelings and the ability to be co-present with ‘significant faces’. Accordingly, in the case of international students, their experiences of VFR tourism might play a role in the degree to which they feel at home while studying in the host country.
On the other hand, Shani (2013) revealed the possibility that VFR visitors may experience a sense of being ‘away’, particularly when the meaning of ‘home’ is examined in terms of privacy and situational control, as well as sociability in associations. He argued that VFR visitors’ feelings of privacy at friends’ and
relatives’ homes is often weaker than in a paid hotel, and by being non-commercial guests, they are also dependent on the hosts’ schedule and are under certain social obligations that undermine their ability to achieve situational control. Studying the impact of VFR tourism experiences on VFR participants’ perceptions of home and away is helpful in understanding their VFR tourism behaviour.
Backer and King (2015) in their review of VFR travel research suggested that visiting friends and relatives is a significant purpose of travel; and that VFR tourism is likely to become more significant as global mobilities of all kinds (e.g., tourism, migration, and education) continue to increase. Means of psychological and sociocultural adaptation are important in the context of such increasing global mobilities. It is reasonable to suggest that VFR tourism might be part of that adaptation process, because it relates to retaining or reinforcing links with existing or emerging social relationships (with friends and family) that may be put under pressure from increasing global mobilities. VFR tourism, therefore, needs to be better understood in terms of how it links to, and is influenced by, other forms of mobilities, as well as to leisure travel more broadly.
As Palovic, Kam, Janta, Cohen, and Williams (2014) posited, VFR is essential to the development and significance of migration, yet this subject has not been explored in depth. Duval (2003) also suggested that research on VFR tourism should take into consideration numerous global transnational networks, the meaning of ‘home’ and
‘away’, and the incorporation of post-colonial mobility and transnationalism (a concept defined as “multiple ties and interactions linking people or institutions across the border of nation-states” by Vertovec, 1999, p.448). He argued that transnational communities and identities could be a motivating factor for VFR travel (Duval, 2003).
Research on VFR tourism indicates strong links to community settlement processes, migration trends and family attachments (Min-En, 2006). In response to calls for further research investigating the significance of VFR in migration, the current study examines the sociocultural impact of international PhD students’ VF tourism experiences on their life within the country of study.
Overall, VFR tourism was previously under-acknowledged in both research and practice because of a common perception that it made little economic contribution and that it would occur naturally anyway whether destination marketers promoted it
a combination of motives, which result in their participation in various activities. This could be one of the reasons why marketers tend to promote it jointly with other types of tourism. However, Müri and Sägesser (2003) considered VFR tourism a truly distinct tourism type and, thus, they argued that it should be targeted separately instead of in connection with other types. This section has outlined the significant contribution of VFR tourism in various respects, which reinforces the need for a separate perspective on this form of tourism, instead of bundling it with other forms.
Crucial to such a perspective on VFR tourism is the host–guest relationship. That relationship is associated not only with the economic aspect of VFR tourism (as alluded to previously), but also with the sociocultural dimension of VFR tourism.
This relationship is discussed in the next section.