Cornerstone’s Monthly Travel Index Report

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 as of July 2020:

July 2020 Travel Index Report: Analysis   Avg Trip Spend (2 days) $995.16
July 2020 Travel Index Report: Analysis   Avg Air Spend $365.17
July 2020 Travel Index Report: Analysis   Avg Hotel Spend $462.23
July 2020 Travel Index Report: Analysis   Avg Car Rental Spend $167.76

There was also a -65.3% decrease in trips taken from June 2020 to July 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 **

July saw a significant decrease in average air spend as well as number of trips taken. However, this decrease in overall trip numbers is not enough to eliminate the gains made in June. 

In fact, total July trips are still 101.7% higher than total trips taken in May, and 165.8% higher than total trips taken in April. What we may be seeing is a stabilization of travel across the board. 

Average hotel spend and average car spend in July are almost equal to what was spent in June. The fall in air spend is slightly exaggerated by a modification in our calculation of the index, but even with that modification accounted for, we still see a total -32% change in average air spend from June to July. 

Information on the Cornerstone Index:

Much like how the S&P 500 Index tells the health of the US Stock Market, so 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.