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.

The growth of events and festivals has been significant over the last decade and a wide range of skills are essential to ensure those events are successful. This requirement has been instrumental in stimulating the creation of more tertiary education opportunities to develop events management knowledge. As the discipline develops, knowledge requires direction in order to understand the changing advances in society.
This is the first book to take a futures approach to understanding event management. A systematic and pattern-based understanding is used to determine the likelihood of future events and trends. Blue skies scenarios are applied throughout to provide a vision of the future of events, not only capturing how the events industry is changing but also important issues that will affect events now as well as the future. Chapters include analysis of sustainability, security, impacts of social media, design at both mega event and community level and review a good range of different types of events from varying geographical regions. A final section captures the contributions of each chapter through the formation of a conceptual map for a future research agenda.

Written by leading academics in the field, this ground breaking book will be a valuable reference point for educators, researchers and industry professionals.

The family remains at the emotional heart of society, and makes up a significant proportion of the tourism market. However, the concept of family has changed over the decades and there are now different types of families that have their own unique attributes and needs. Families may have one parent or two, who may or may not be of different genders. This cutting-edge book constructs a multidisciplinary perspective on family tourism by discussing various types of families; how parents and children influence travel behaviours now and in the future and how family holidays may also be linked to stress. Family Tourism: Multidisciplinary Perspectives provides a compilation of issues from academic writers around the globe, to provide a range of perspectives linked by a common theme of family tourism with a futures perspective.

The growth of events and festivals has been significant over the last decade and a wide range of skills are essential to ensure those events are successful. This requirement has been instrumental in stimulating the creation of more tertiary education opportunities to develop events management knowledge. As the discipline develops, knowledge requires direction in order to understand the changing advances in society. This is the first book to take a futures approach to understanding event management. A systematic and pattern-based understanding is used to determine the likelihood of future events and trends. Using blue skies scenarios to provide a vision of the future of events, not only capturing how the events industry is changing but also important issues that will affect events now as well as the future. Chapters include analysis of sustainability, security, impacts of social media, design at both mega event and community level and review a good range of different types of events from varying geographical regions. A final section captures the contributions of each chapter through the formation of a conceptual map for a future research agenda. Written by leading academics in the field, this ground breaking book will be a valuable reference point for educators, researchers and industry professionals.

VFR travellers are not just visiting friends and/or relations. They may also use services provided by tourism industries, although to what degree has historically attracted little research. The results of this study suggest that VFR and non-VFR travellers came from different generating regions and travelled by different transit routes to reach their destination. Therefore, generic marketing campaigns aimed at the leisure market would be unlikely to be effective in capturing VFR travellers. VFR travellers surveyed were active tourists, undertaking a wide range of activities to a similar extent as non-VFR travellers. In fact, when VFR hosts' expenditures were combined with VFR expenditures and compared against non-VFR travellers, there was no significant difference between the total expenditures. Thus, the importance of VFR travel to a local community is clear. One significant contribution of this study has been the development of three VFR models (The VFR Trilogy). These models provide a foundation to improve understanding of VFR behaviour, which will assist higher education lecturers in teaching this topic to tourism students.