ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how leisure and tourist travel are not isolated exotic islands but significant sets of social and material relations connecting and reconnecting disconnected people in face-to-face proximities where obligations and pleasures go together. Theuthor documented the geographical spread of the reported social networks and how virtual, communicative and corporeal travel connects dispersed social relations. Income is an important element of network capital but it does not determine travel behaviour. Rather appropriate income, network capital and distant connections generate leisurely travel and mobile biographies. Travel theory and research have traditionally seen travellers as free-floating individuals seeking to maximize their pleasures'. They have often failed to notice the obligations that choreograph tourism escapes. VFR tourism is distinct in that it requires more than just economic capital. While communicative travel is crucial to dispersed social networks, its substitution effect upon corporeal tourist travel is small so far, because it connects dispersed networks in spaces of enjoyed co-presence.
