Media and PR

Travel Channel is smarting from Bourdain's departure to CNN, and it apparently decided that the value of a good relationship with Cadillac was worth more than the cost of burning bridges with its one-time star.

Airlines have been among the most progressive of industries when it comes to embracing social media, mainly because that's the biggest venue for passengers to gripe about them. Lot more needs to be done beyond informational and reactive ways of working in social.

It can be difficult enough for airlines to manage their brand internally, but even more perplexing when faced with outside spammers whose fraud promotions serve no apparent purpose.

Airlines have been more progressive on use of social media, airports have been the ignored cousin, sort of. But passengers are already heavily using social media inside the airport ecosystem, so the management of airports has to reflect that sooner or later.

"SEO experts" encourage hotels to create original, engaging content and redesign their websites -- and hire them to do the work. But the truth is some common sense changes are what hotel sites need.

Yelp will need to get some momentum going outside of New York and San Francisco if it hopes to fend off the growing local review threat coming out of the Googleplex.

With 25 years experience tricking-out his own trailers, Michaels certainly has the expertise, but it remains to be seen if a man known for groupies and substance abuse can connect with the family-focused demo that is typically behind the wheel of RVs.

Public shaming of businesses that gin up reviews in their favor is a good idea for consumers, but it will likely begin another battle with merchants who accuse the listings guide of bias.

With three billion check-ins, Foursquare has a Fort Knox of data about consumers' retail habits, but a sizeable portion of its 30 million tips about places leave a lot to be desired. Foursquare will have to do a lot of partnering or get the check-in crowd into review-writing mode to improve its search results.