Dennis Schaal

Airlines are indeed missing out on marketing opportunities by relegating their merchandising to the time of booking or a couple of days before the flight. If they want to market to flyers during the flight, they need to strike the right balance and avoid being bombastic.

Travel companies that want to attract Millennials and teens may now have to consider game consoles among their platform-development priorities. This brings new meaning to the concept of a killer (i.e. Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto) app.

Every travel brand engaged in mobile -- and that should be all of them -- should read about Booking.com's big-picture vision for mobile. Hipmunk and Expedia are also going down this road, albeit to a lesser degree.

There's a lot of candor about the Priceline Group's acquisition strategy in Huston's statements, and there is plenty of cash to back it all up. His passing reference to business travel as a potential big opportunity is extremely interesting.

Seems like a small amount of buying anything substantial, if you see startup valuations these days. It may need a lot more if it wants to make a difference against tough competition.

Under the new technology agreement, Travelport keeps hosting the Delta platform in their joint data center in Atlanta, and the airline gets more control of intellectual property and its data.

The "local" trend in the hospitality industry only goes so far and Marriott is worried about freshening up some of its older brands such as Marriott and Courtyard. CEO Sorenson concedes that not every property can be unique.

The "little guys," in this case owners of a vacation rental property or two, feel powerless and at the mercy of the giant vacation rental sites. The sites have to balance the needs of the professional property managers and the individual owners and guess who is coming out on top.

It's hard to see what would make Travelport an attractive investment in 2014 given its indebtedness, net losses and perennial reliance on air transactions despite moves to build up non-air revenue.

With its focus on flights, CheapOair sells a ton of seats for American Airlines and US Airways, and this pact is a bow to that performance.