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, 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 private, 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 2021:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1309.01 |  -7% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $572.41 | -10% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $524.51 |  -0.6% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $212.09 | -13% |
There was also a 27% decrease in processed trips taken from November 2021 to December 2021.
** 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 2021 Analysis
- Happy Holidays to all our readers! We know our metrics look down, but this is just part of the yearly dip that we see in corporate travel during this month. The dip is expected — it is the recovery of the dip that will tell us a lot about how the holidays were truly affected this year.
- Despite the holidays, hotel rates stayed almost exactly the same as they were the month prior. This could be a side effect of all of the leisure travel during the holiday season.
- Overall, we will be keeping a close eye on the trend as January’s numbers come in. How quickly and how high the bounce back from the holiday season is will set a definite tone for 2022. Omicron has already affected events, with at least one tradeshow that Cornerstone knows about being cancelled due to the rising virus cases.
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.
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.
