TITLE: what is the real difference between traveling salesman problem (TSP) and vehicle routing problem (VRP)?
QUESTION [5 upvotes]: Both problems are well-known NP-hard problems with great similarities. In fact, I do not see the real difference between these two problems. It seems relatively easy to model TSR in the form of VRP and likewise inversely. So what is the essential point to make VRP a different problem from TSP?
p.s. I cannot find appropriate tags for this question.  I think important problems such as TSP should be tags themselves.

REPLY [2 votes]: In the year 1959, Dantzig and Ramser, the authos of "The truck dispatching problem" described how the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) may be considered as a generalization of the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). They described the generalization of the TSP with multiple salespeople (supposedly riding a single vehicle each), and called this the “Clover problem”. 
You can read more about the VRP and its many variants in "A Survey on the Vehicle Routing Problem and its Variants", and access an attempt to compile all of those at: VRP-REP.ORG
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