Rafat Ali

Think of Skifties as a new kind of social media award that marries data, editorial context and effectiveness.

This is the global State of Travel, in 2014 and beyond. Go ahead, gorge on the 105-page slide deck.

Thanks to all of you for helping us get to where we are, we'll continue to inform, delight and surprise all of you as we grow.

Tripadvisor has been dancing around tours and activities for a while, as it is a natural fit for it, and with Viator, it makes its first large foray into it.

Lesson: Always look beyond the signals emanating from early adopters on Twitter.

Launched in 1998, the discussion forum Flyertalk changed forever how avid travelers perceived and redeemed airline and hotel loyalty programs.

Emirates shows its size and might in every way. If Emirates ever get the naming right to the tournament -- which this being FIFA, entirely possible -- would surely cause a lot of controversy.

A vanguard within a new era, fueled by new access to an Internet full of information, from these consumers emerges a new model -- the silent traveler.

Emerging from this mix of pulling away and drawing close, for the silent traveler and travel brands, are new models and approaches for both customer relations and local discovery.