We here are 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, especially in light of the recent crises, it is paramount that companies with data share our knowledge and the foresight it brings so that we might not experience a repeat of the crash that accompanied the emergence of COVID.
To facilitate that goal of data sharing, and yet also keep the data of our clients privacy, we have been working on the creation of a Cornerstone Index.
Work on this project is still in progress, but we wanted to share with you our biggest numbers coming out of the Index regarding December 2020:
 | Avg Trip Spend (2 days) | $1,050.53 |  (+0.34%) | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $413.95 |  (-5%) | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $456.96 |  (+7%) | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $179.62 | (-2%) |
There was also a 28% decrease in processed trips taken from November 2020 to December 2020.
** 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 **
- We saw the expected further decrease in trips taken due to the Holidays. Losing 28% of processed trips was not surprising, but we will be keeping a very close eye on this number in particular as we get into the New Year. New travel restrictions and new safety measures have been promised by the incoming American administration, so this will likely affect business travel, especially in North America. How much of an effect is yet to be seen or predicted.
- Average spend stayed even from November to December, even if hotels saw a +7% increase in costs. None of these fluctuations are very out of the ordinary of holiday travel.
- The total trips processed by Cornerstone’s systems have fallen a total of roughly 50% since October. It still hasn’t reached anywhere near our low point back in last April, but it’s still a relatively sharp drop. We will be keeping close eyes on total trips processed for January to see if this is going to be a phenomenon restricted to the holidays, or if the recovery is going to be set back a little bit by the new COVID strand combined with new travel restrictions.
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 index, some values may fluctuate month to month in their calculations. However, we do not believe this offsets major trends.
We also plan on publishing a table of all of our 2020 numbers as soon as we are happy with our index formula and have been able to present what we feel is the most accurate data for a number of months in a row.
In the future, this will become an interactive app closely resembling our TravelOptix platform. At that time, we will be including functionality for different currencies. We are welcoming any feedback regarding this idea, and look forward to providing this information going forward.
