The Free Funnel Is Closing. Your CFO Will Notice Before Your CMO Does.

by David Giersdorf | Oct 9, 2026 | Insights

Somewhere in your next budget cycle, a line item is going to move against you. Customer acquisition cost will drift up. The marketing dashboard will attribute it to seasonality, competition, market conditions. The CFO will see something simpler: the same growth now...

The Agent Doesn’t Browse. If Your Data Can’t Speak to a Machine, You’re Not in the Room.

by David Giersdorf | Oct 9, 2026 | Insights

The most consequential customer conversation in luxury travel this year is one no human is in. A household worth eight figures decides it wants three weeks in the polar summer, or a villa season in the Aegean, or the suite at the top of the ship. Increasingly, the...

The most modern acquisition channel in luxury travel right now is made of paper.

by David Giersdorf | Oct 9, 2026 | Insights

Consider what happened to every digital path to the affluent household. Search is being absorbed into AI answers. Social costs reprice at auction every quarter. Retargeting is starved by privacy tools — and the wealthiest households opt out at the highest rates. Now...

The Logistics Hub Just Got the Money: Why Gen X Is the Buyer Your Campaigns Keep Skipping

by David Giersdorf | Oct 9, 2026 | Insights

Every multigenerational trip in the luxury travel market has an operating officer. One person who researches the options, reconciles the calendars, manages the parents’ expectations and the teenagers’ moods, negotiates the budget, and presses the booking...

This Isn’t a Boom. It’s a Supercycle. Stop Planning Like It’s a Cycle.

by David Giersdorf | Oct 9, 2026 | Insights

Every operator of my generation learned the same reflex: booms end. You ride the expansion, you bank the yield, and you keep one hand on the throttle because the cycle always rolls over. That reflex protected a lot of P&Ls over forty years. Right now, it is the...