Jeremy Kressmann

There are 400 million Chinese millennials. For any marketer still not convinced that China is the future of the travel industry, there are now 400 million reasons to change your mind.

Even though Wyndham's attempted "coup" of Starwood members had to be called off, it's a reminder the hospitality industry needs to take a fresh look at the hotel loyalty experience. So far, most of the innovation seems to happening with non-traditional players like HotelTonight and Airbnb.

Social media players like Facebook and Snapchat have had lots of of success capturing bigger shares of travel marketers' advertising budgets. But if they really want to earn the big money traditionally saved for TV campaigns, they'll need to evolve beyond the "social" label.

Norway is struggling with the challenge of too much tourism. It's not alone.

Lots of "likes" and "shares" look good in a marketing campaign reports. But did they lead to meaningful actions by the audience? It's time for social media metrics to get more scrutiny from travel marketers.

With the threat of direct booking, the constant spending by traditional online travel agencies, and the move to mobile, metasearch has been forced to rethink its role in the booking funnel.

Social media is becoming big business. If you need proof, just look at American Airlines, which is devoting millions of dollars to making sure travelers say good things about them online.

There's billions of location-specific insights hidden inside travelers' Instagram photos, Tweets and TripAdvisor reviews. All travel marketers need to do is "connect the dots."

Proximity-based "beacon" technology is a transformative technology relatively few people know about. It's already revolutionizing the retail sector, and now airports are seeing the benefits too.

Many travel marketers struggle to find mobile ad formats that mobile users will watch or click on. That’s a big problem for travel brands and the advertising industry.