Dennis Schaal

Something can't be dead if it never lived. In terms of real consumer traction, peer-to-peer tour guide businesses, however well-intentioned, never won broad acceptance. The economics of these businesses didn't enable them to achieve any kind of scale.

Despite all of the ignorance he sees, the Hotel Fixer thinks the U.S. hotel industry is in fairly good shape as long as educational resources are directed at "teaching the craft of hospitality and service." But, don't let hotel consultants rob you blind.

Altimeter Capital's new venture capital fund won't be exclusively devoted to travel startups, but expect to see it making news along the lines of Concur's larger Perfect Trip Fund, which indeed concentrates on travel.

Barger is seeking to maintain JetBlue's middle ground between ultra low cost and network carriers, but investors' new love affair with Spirit Airlines and others of its type will keep the pressure on JetBlue management.

Anyone who boards a commercial airline sees that there are privileged and not-so privileged passengers in the eyes of the airline. United Mileage Plus reinforces and widens the great divide by providing more bang per mile for elite flyers on lucrative intercontinental routes.

Small businesses have their share of inefficiencies when it comes to travel and entertainment spending, but the gap in small business versus large corporation spending in Concur's numbers is also a function of more transactions by road warriors at small businesses.

Spin it however you want to: These changes to Gmail are a potential nightmare for travel marketers who may see their emails to customers end up under a Promotions tab, which is one step above spam.

Hipmunk needs to make a big push to become a household name. Easier said than done. The redesign of its hotel pages is an attempt to speed and simplify the user experience, but somehow it seems more complicated than before.

JetBlue passengers deserve to know that a cyber attack on JetBlue's computer network went undetected for more than three years. Even though the files allegedly accessed contained crew members' information only, it is still an incident that customers should be aware of.

Frontier is trying to become a Spirit-like airline, apparently without the wild advertising, as Frontier has recently begun charging passengers for soft drinks, online check-ins, and a bevy of other fees. It will, of course, be interesting to find out who the potential buyer is.