Motel 6 may be best known for one of the great ad campaigns in hospitality history - the use of spokesman Tom Bodett and the tagline, "We'll leave the light on for ya." It's still running after more than 30 years.

Springtime concerns about travel bans hampering summer travel faded, and as summer 2017 draws to a close, it seemed on track to equal or surpass the strong summer travel seasons of recent years. From a digital perspective, a SimilarWeb analysis of traffic to travel sites - which is highly seasonal, peaking in the summer - showed this summer's peak of 1.07 billion visits in July is almost exactly the same peak as in July 2016. The future continues to look bright, as consumer enthusiasm for travel, and experiences more generally, continues to grow.

Millennials and baby boomers are constantly at the center of media and marketing attention. Older consumers have the experience, status and spending power; younger consumers are digital natives, focused on "experiences" and traveling by the masses. But what about the group squeezed in the middle: the 35- to 54-year-olds?

Understanding travel consumers and their purchasing process is certainly not a day at the beach for marketers. A travel consumer's journey is extremely complex due to a number of factors. First, it's important to consider the reasoning behind travel consumers' interests and behaviors and how they differ across devices. Are consumers researching upcoming trips to take soon or dreaming of a future "bucket list" journey? How long will it take them to actually book a trip? What devices are they using to research their options and what devices are they using to book travel? Travel marketers need to view the …

It turns out that a mouse - at least a computer mouse - is not really quiet. Every time a human being moves it to get to someplace else on a screen, that human is telling us something about what they're thinking - and may ultimately be doing. For marketers, that could be crucial, according to a company called ContentSquare, a user experience analytics platform for websites and apps that deploys artificial intelligence to come up with its insights. It has almost 200 clients across multiple industries but with quite a few in travel, including Air France and Best Western.

In today's ever-changing landscape of hotels, we must recall the origin of "boutique" properties, and acknowledge the changes that have made for the new paradigm of what the term represents today.

Travelers will mostly opt to experience their destinations as "the locals" do. In fact, myriad destination specific experiences are the main reason for leisure travel. It seems obvious, but hotels often miss that important detail. While hotels often craft polished, streamlined, inclusive and on-premise engagements for guests, it is off the beaten path where the magic is happening.

When a traveler visits a new destination for the first time, they often don't know where to look to find out what's going on, what's coming up and where the go-to hot spots are. In other words, there's no Yelp for events.

Michaela Guzy is a one-woman reflection of what has happened in the media in the last few years. After reaching high-level positions at publishing houses like Conde Nast and American Express Publishing, she dropped it all to start a website called OhThePeopleYouMeet (OTPYM) - dedicated to travel adventures focused on, well, the people you meet when traveling.

As hotels and airlines look to renegotiate their contracts with online travel agencies (OTA), they may want to take a closer look at how well each OTA performs in driving consumer conversations offline and online. Since social influence has a proven impact on sales, a quick chat at the water cooler or a Facebook Messenger discussion about an upcoming vacation or weekend getaway is a leading indicator of who will secure the booking. Right now, TripAdvisor, Expedia.com and the other OTAs are outperforming hotels and airlines in this all-important battle for share of conversation.