Boomers are truly a mixed bag. Millennials either love 'em or hate 'em. With 86 million millennials as the soon-to-be biggest buyers of luxury products and 80 million boomers who currently hold the power and the purse strings corporately and are still the biggest buyers of luxury products and services, a deeper appreciation of their ethic and biases by the millennials and the differences between the two generations is essential.

One of the biggest challenges travel marketers face is that the typical affluent audience pool is fairly finite. Much of marketers' efforts go toward addressing consumers who have traveled in the past and are assumed to have the financial capacity to do so again. While these may be valuable indicators of future purchases, they may also apply to a very small group of consumers. In all likelihood, this is a group that receives multiple competing offers throughout the year, helping ensure they've almost become immune to travel advertising.

It's early October, and affluent shoppers are already quietly shopping for the holidays. As affluents can be defined in many different ways, in today's column we will focus on the following three affluent market segments and their holiday shopping plans.