Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) tourism is a large form of tourism worldwide, and is known as one of the four major forms of tourism along with business, leisure and entertainment, and other tourism. In the West, it has become one of the focal topics of academic research, but the domestic tourism academia has paid little attention to the VFR tourism market and achieved very few results. Therefore, this study tries to sort out the literature related to VFR tourism at home and abroad from the perspectives of the concept, economic contribution, and heterogeneity of VFR tourism, summarize and review its research progress, and provide theoretical inspiration to promote the development of VFR tourism.