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 it is paramount that companies with data share our knowledge and the foresight it brings.
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.
Here are the numbers regarding the July 2023 travel index:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1546.81 |  -2% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $761.86 | -4% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $568.32 | -2% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $216.63 |  +6% |
There was also an 7% decrease in processed trips taken from June 2023 to July 2023.
** 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 2023 Analysis
- Between June and July, we saw a reduction in both Air Trips (-7.7%) as well as Hotel Stays (-6.5%), but an increase in Car Rentals (+6.1%). YOY, trips taken in July 2023 still outpaced July 2022, though only by around 15%. Does this mean that corporate travel has stabilized or even topped out? We’ll find out as we get into the busy business time of Q3.
- Total Car Rentals saw a bump in both price and reservations in July. When combined with less air trips processed and less hotel rooms booked, we can guess than July was another month of shorter business trips in terms of both length and distance. People are staying closer to home, and staying on the road slightly less this summer.
- Exciting news for the Cornerstone Journal: We will be implementing and tracking the changing percentages of Total Hotel Stays and Total Car Rentals processed through our systems starting next month. We’ve spoken about those metrics before, but we’re excited to start reporting on them regularly.
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.