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Looking forward, we are focused on lessons learned during the Great Recession by smart luxury travel marketers and experts who shared their experiences –and their counsel—in LT360 columns and stories during these challenging times.

Senior Editor Harvey Chipkin and I have used boldface black—a hopeful color for the coming year—to highlight smart marketer themes, actions, and adaptations below that will pay large dividends going forward.

Read Luxury Leaves 2009 Behind, Looks Ahead to 2010 for more information. 

In today's commentary we share thoughts from a recent conversation with Mary Gostelow, editor of KIWI's online WOW Report. They don't say "Affluent", but they sure point to a more sensible, and comfortable travel culture to come:

•  Everybody was using luxury for everything. We've been living in a time of growing excess which was not really necessary. Why should bedrooms get bigger and bigger? Why should the thread count of sheets get higher and higher? Who cares? Does anybody even know what thread count means? Why should one hotel's terry bath towels get thicker and more sumptuous than anybody else's? You know, it was as though everybody was going for the Guinness Book of Records the whole time.

We managed to catch up with Rushmore, CEO of global mega-consultants HVS, to see how he views the current economic situation in the hospitality sector.  There had been so many dramatic changes since we had interviewed him less than a year ago. Here are some highlights on how he sees it all playing out:

•  "The good news, we think, is that there will be a turnaround by this time next year," Rushmore asserts. He goes further in saying, "Meetings and leisure will come back strongly because of pent-up demand."
• On the luxury front, Rushmore says, "The beauty of owning a luxury hotel today, for those who can hold on, is that they will not have new competition for the foreseeable future."