One of the great things about working in the travel industry is the enthusiasm travel inspires in so many of us. Chances are that most of us are as passionate about traveling ourselves as the customers we serve.As someone who genuinely loves the travel experience, both the journey and the destination itself, I was incredibly saddened to see this recent article on layoffs at Lonely Planet - a guidebook I've trusted and (like many others) carried with me around the world for decades.

New CEO places focus on measuring outcomes and making a lasting difference.

What if you could actually know which of your marketing efforts really drove bookings regardless of where they booked? Yes you probably currently know how many people clicked on your digital ad and eventually booked on your website. But think about how many other scenarios you are missing. Most people never click anything but were influenced by your ads. Some people still call or book in person after being exposed to digital marketing. Others might get interested in your travel product after a live event, print ad or TV spot. So they start offline and then months later they end …

Travelers have few things in common. You can safely assume most travelers have a destination in mind and the financial means to reach it. But the differences end there.

It's been pointed out that social media can be pretty anti-social. If millions of people are sitting around on computers connecting electronically, it does not add to the overall volume of human in-person contact.

There was a time not long ago when travel was on the forefront of digital innovation. Social media is a fantastic example. Travelers and the travel industry embraced the social channel long before Facebook was popular - even before "social media" was a common term (remember the early days of IGoUGo or Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree?).

Compared with the average American, affluent Americans are adventurous souls, as high-income consumers are frequently "on the go" to both domestic and foreign destinations. And when they do travel, they spend according to their means, which increase as their household incomes rise... all of which bodes well for airlines, cruise lines, hotels/resorts, car rentals, and more. For a "big picture" road map to their destinations, their means of travel, and how much they are planning to spend, this report paints pictures of consumers' plans to travel during the next 12 months. For example:

My partner and I attended a fancy dinner at a major tourism conference recently. We were seated next to the GM and director of sales & marketing for a fairly large independent resort. When they asked about our company, we explained who we are and what we do.

Rainn Wilson, who played the quirky Dwight Schrute on "The Office" TW show, recently tweeted a number of caustic, okay vicious, comments about US Airways service because a connecting flight had left prior to departure time - causing the cast of the show to miss a scheduled appearance in Scranton, Pa., where the TV show takes place. Some of the tweets were pretty graphic, and I'll spare you those, but, clearly, somebody like Wilson has a tremendous number of followers and impact.

Airline travel has become so common for many of us in business that we sometimes look on the airlines themselves like utilities - companies that provide an essential service that (with rare exceptions) we take for granted and don't acknowledge unless something goes wrong.