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 January 2023 travel index:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1446 |  +11% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $750 | +17% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $540 | +6% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $206 | +18% |
There was also a 17% increase in processed trips from December 2023 to January 2024.
** 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 **
January 2024 Analysis
- On one hand, the year is off to a strong start with a 17% increase in trips processed in January, showing that 2024 is strong out of the gate on business travel. YOY however shows a significant decrease in that January bump. Jan 2023 saw 40% more trips processed than Jan 2022, compared to just the 17% YOY that we saw this last month. This may be an indicator that trips are evening out rather than continuing in bursts and lulls, or (as you will see below) it may mean people are choosing to stay local early in their Q1 cycle.
- Costs are up across the board, showing a strong confidence in the airlines, hotel, and car rental sectors. With the number of air trips processed increasing strongly, those costs do not seem to be putting any damper on those trips quite yet.
- Maybe the most significant change this month is the increase in hotel stays and car rentals. While air trips are up at that 17% mark over December, hotel stays are up 30% from last month and car rentals climbed 46%. It looks like a lot of the “first of the year” business trips are staying closer to home than before and may help explain why our YOY air trips are down so far. Are we seeing a trend toward “keeping it local” for now? Time will certainly tell!
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.