Here at Cornerstone Information Systems, we 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.
Here are the numbers regarding the December 2023 travel index:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1446 |  +7% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $763 | +11% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $508 | +5% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $174 |  -1% |
There was also a 21% decrease in processed trips from November 2023 to December 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 **
December 2023 Analysis
- With December the traditional bottom of the corporate holiday travel trough, it’s no surprise that there are 20% less trips taken this month than last month. As for YOY in December … this is the ONLY month in 2023 that has negative growth over 2022. In fact, we saw 37% less trips processed in December 2023 vs 2022.
- YOY 2022 vs 2023 numbers look solid! Total trips processed increased by +11.4% overall. January was the month with the most significant YAY growth at +43.7%. We’ll see next month if that trend continues. As stated, December was the only year with any negative growth, perhaps signifying a return to actual holiday leisure travel instead of taking last minute Q4 business trips.
- Hotel stays rose slightly from November to December (+9.8%), and car rentals stayed roughly the same from November to December (+1.8%).
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.