Patrick Whyte

Instead of doing nothing when they retire, older people increasingly want to travel more. This is good news for the travel industry but it needs to work out better ways to target the baby boomer generation.

With older people much more confident about travel than they were a couple of decades ago, it's perhaps understandable that they are happier to travel on their own.

Flybe's management team will be hoping the airline's latest turnaround strategy works, where others have failed. The carrier has plenty of challenges and is operating in a very tough environment. Might it find things easier as part of a bigger aviation group?

With expedition cruising set for serious growth over the next few years, it is understandable that one of the big cruise companies has decided to get more involved. The question now is will the others follow?

Buying Silversea will certainly improve Royal Caribbean's offering in the luxury and expedition sectors. Will it be happy as a majority shareholder, as it says now, or will it eventually want complete control?

Hotel-cruise crossovers are pretty rare these days, so it will be interesting to see how the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection fares. Will the brand power be enough to entice land-lovers to take to water?

IHG has been pretty busy over the last few months, first buying and building up its luxury offering and now unveiling a new upscale conversion brand. CEO Keith Barr certainly has his hands full.

Everybody wants a piece of the tours and activities sector, but how easy is it going to be to migrate all those businesses that currently operate offline to online?

How seriously is EasyJet going to take the packaged vacations market? More seriously than it did before for sure, but enough to compete with the plethora of tour operators and online travel agencies out there? At this stage it's hard to tell.

We wonder whether Airbnb's community spirit will survive its growth plans and impending IPO.