Rafat Ali

The list, even though one-company specific, shows the meetings and conventions industry is coming out of recession as the broader economy improves. Cities with airports near city centers are doing a lot better.

Don't pooh pooh them off, whole economies have been built on them; cliches drive the travel economy ever since we started making travel brochures. They are what drive people to book these trips, and do what everyone else has done before them.

Sabre has come up with its solution for Travelocity: Outsource its operation to Expedia. Sabre gets to basically offload a money-losing operation while holding on for now to its assets in Europe, possibly for a sale down the road.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social sources are now looked upon as legit travel information sources, while TripAdvisor lords over us all.

This Inc. Magazine list highlights the distance between what’s growing and working in travel, versus what gets funded by VCs.

How long can Tripadvisor stick to its core of media and lead generation and how much growth is still left in there? That would answer the question of whether the company wants to spend material money in doing bigger acquisitions than it has done so far, and move into actual transactions and booking space in travel.

It is still early in the travel information game in digital, and the consumer behavior is likely to continue evolving, and will likely still include some mix of old school methods.

How do you push people to other parts of the country beyond the big gateway cities, and spread the economic benefit of travel more evenly? The London Plus tips are good ones, universally applicable.

There are a lot of nuances and niches here, but the big writing has been on the wall for a long time time.

Airports, as miserable as they are in the overall travel experience these days, continue to be a place to show off, and social media outlets like Facebook are perfect venues for that.