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 January 2021:
 | Avg Trip Spend (2 days) | $763.89 |  -23% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $400.56 | -33% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $129.86 | -20% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $223.47 | -4% |
There was also a 12.6% increase in processed trips taken from December 2020 to January 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 **
- Goodbye holidays, and goodbye holiday travel prices! 2021 has started off just like every other year in that respect – with a decrease from the holiday travel rates and a large increase in total business trips taken.
- Total trips registered through Cornerstone databases shot back up to nearly pre-holiday level this January. In fact, there is only a difference of a few hundred trips between those taken in November 2020 and those taken in January 2021. We’re hoping that we can now surpass the October 2020 milestone since it was the most trips registered in our systems since the pandemic began.
- The price drops look dramatic, but they are just an artifact of inflated travel costs around the winter holidays. Like with the total trips taken, costs have gone back to roughly what they were in November 2020. We will continue to keep an eye on them to see if they will stabilize.
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.
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. The changes in prices and trips processed reflect this new data sample from December as well, so there may be some differences between this post and our December analysis.
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.
