We here at Cornerstone Information Systems have been working on a method to aggregate, anonymize, and distribute information about the health of the Travel Industry – gathered from all of the data that flows through our network every month. We feel that it is paramount that companies with data share our knowledge and the foresight it brings.
To facilitate that goal of data sharing, and yet also keep the data of our clients private, we have been working on the creation of a Cornerstone Index.
Here are the numbers regarding the January 2023 travel index:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1535.47 |  8% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $768.57 | 7% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $564.86 | 8% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $202.04 | 8% |
There was also an 11% Decrease in processed trips taken from December 2022 to January 2023.
** All currency is displayed in USD – the aggregates of our data have been converted into USD before being taken into account and calculating the Index numbers **
January 2023 Analysis
- While January’s trips processed fell by 11% from December, the news isn’t all negative. January 2023 has seen 53% more trips processed by our systems than January of 2022, and that is *significant* growth. It’s a very strong start to a year that promises good performance. Provided, of course, no unforeseen interruptions.
- Prices are raising steadily, though this may be influenced by the inflation being experienced both domestically and abroad. Right now, prices are not out of their normal ranges, but if they keep up the 7-8% growth over the next few months, we could see some high points compared to the last few years.
- One “hidden” stat that we noticed was that while air trips declined, the average hotel stays and average days per car rental both went up last month. This indicates a slight shift in January toward driving instead of flying to business destinations.
Information on the Cornerstone Index:
Much like how the S&P 500 Index tells the health of the US Stock Market, the Cornerstone Index is meant to reflect the health of the travel industry according to the data that we have available to us.
Please note that we are performing adjustments and cleansing to ensure an accurate index. This means that during our development of the travel index, some values may fluctuate month to month in their calculations. However, we do not believe this offsets major travel trends.