No slam dunk here! But let’s get started, with first focus on the USA.

Why not get real about who’s really rich, and what rich means when it comes to travel? Who can afford it? Which Americans fill those luxury hotel rooms and cruise cabins and first class and business class airline seats? And even those private jets?

Certainly we can do that with clarity? Not so fast!

• Pam Danziger at Unity Marketing relies on the most recent Census Bureau statistics from 2006 to estimate that 9million ( 8%) of households with $150,000 annual income are able to reach for luxury trips.
• Ron Kurtz of The American Affluence Research Center, using numbers from the Federal Reserve Board, defines the affluent market as the wealthiest 10% of households, = minimum net worth of $3 million and annual income of $270,000,
• Meanwhile,  Monroe Mendelsohn Research (MMR), uses $250,000 in annual household income and over 1 million in net liquid assets, as a luxury qualifier, which nets 2 million households

At the moment we are clearly not all together on the metrics of luxury consumers.
So let’s stop right there while we invite other luxury researchers to join in, and also ask:

• How many affluent/rich households actually drive luxury travel demand?
• Isn’t number of luxury trips taken annually a more meaningful metric, as Mendelsohn data seems to suggest?
• How many business travelers are creating luxury demand, where personal income is not necessarily the luxury driver ?
• Are conferences, expos, meeting attendees not an essential part of our picture?

I am absolutely addicted to business travel writer Joe Brancatelli, and his friends who craft the content about Life on the Road at www.joesentme.biz. When Joe wanted to offset some of his costs a few years ago with a Membership fee, I joined immediately. I also enjoy his Portfolio Magazine column, Seat 2B

Whether you are a luxury traveler (air, hotel, and all the rest), or otherwise, what Joe Brancatelli and guests deliver is lively, pragmatic wisdom—along with their pet peeve treats. Yes, Joe does rant, mostly about dysfunctional airline moves affecting consumers.

What Joe shares, always experientially, serves me well, whether traveling for business or pleasure.
I wonder how many members Joe has among travel agents who should be copying/pasting/sharing his practical counsel with customers.

There are valuable nuggets in every issue of The Brancatelli File.
Here are just a few excerpts that captured my attention in recent weeks: 

Issues-Insights-Imagination in Luxury travel marketing.-that’s what we promised  when we launched this past November- (not breaking news, or personnel announcements, or press releases about  promotions –to-come). Our tracking systems from our newsletter partners, Real Magnet, as well as Google Analytics, confirm every week that you like what you see. Our growing readership, and great numbers on pages viewed and time spent, confirm that ‘smart marketers talking with smart marketers’ is a winning formula for reader engagement. Here are some recent reader favorites and links to those stories

• Interview with Steve Rushmore: New Economics on Luxury Hotel Growth
• 200 billion & Glowing: International Luxury Travel-ILTM Survey
• Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster-Dana Thomas
• Democratization-The Next Big Thing in Luxury Travel? Hershel Sarbin
• The Long Tail and Travel-Philip C Wolf
• Summing Up 2007-Tracking US/Global Travel-Oxford Economics
• The Golden Age of Travel? The Dark Side of Affluence and Choice-Pico Iyer,
• Frontline Selling-Where the Rubber Really Meets the Road—From the Editor
• Who’s Doing What That Works—Brands share results in Imagination Marketing—a continuing service feature always on our home page

Much of the magic in luxury travel marketing comes from smart marketers just  being smart marketers. That’s why, in this issue and on our web site, you will find Voices and Views from people like Philip Wolf , founder of PhoCus Wright, whose research and travel conferences speak so smartly to e-commerce in travel, only rarely touching on luxury travel per se.

PhoCus Wright’s mid-November Conference  in Orlando, which traveled under the name Braving the Long Tail, offered so many insights about marketing in the New Media Age—what Wolf calls Travel 2.0—that the word luxury wasn’t missed at all.

That’s why you are seeing Long Tail excerpts here, and reading about the new Power of Word of Mouth  in all marketing, and seeing new data about human behavior and aspiration—along with those imaginative Real People, Real Results stories of innovation in Luxury Travel. For a reminder of how big luxury travel brands put the kibosh on the word ‘Luxury” in advertising, click here.

Hershel Sarbin