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 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 February 2021:
 | Avg Trip Spend (2 days) | $1249.65 |  -5% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $390.02 | -15% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $133.82 |  +1% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $229.32 | +3% |
There was also a 5.8% increase in processed trips taken from January 2020 to February 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 **
- Like we hoped, business travel is still climbing as we all come back from the holiday season. There was a 5.8% increase in processed trips during February.
- Air spend went down to roughly match pre-holiday prices as of February 2021. Hotel costs and car rental costs stayed roughly the same, but these also did not see quite the same spike during the holidays that air spend did.
- With the various COVID-19 vaccines coming out and as more and more people become vaccinated, we hope to begin to see real progress in travel’s recovery going forward. Safety first of course, but we can cross our fingers.
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.
UPDATE: We have taken the first step toward enhancing our metrics and visualizations by moving to a different and larger data sample. This means that since the data table has changed, so too has the calculation of averages across various months.
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.
