We 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 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.
Here are the numbers coming out of the Index regarding May 2022:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1585.75 |  +3% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $768.16 | +3% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $598.38 | +5% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $219.21 |  -2% |
There was also a 4% Increase in processed trips taken from April 2022 to May 2022.
** 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 **
May 2022 Analysis
- May saw a leveling off of travel with it’s modest +4% growth in total trips processed. We are still 109% higher year-over-year from May 2021. In fact, with only five months of processed data for 2022, we are already at 70% of all travel processed in 2021, and projections for the rest of the year are optimistic.
- Prices for most categories are still holding strong in their climbs, and car rentals are remaining the stable outlier. Car rental costs have still not waivered outside of +/- 4% in many quarters with the exception of the quick spike this last February. Strong prices mean strong usage, so these are also optimistic signs.
- With summer business travel in full swing, we can probably expect trip numbers to have stabilized where we are seeing them right now. We do not expect any slow down (except for the unexpected disruptions of course), but we also don’t anticipate any major spikes like we had this March. Slow and steady is the key to stability, and we welcome this with open arms.
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.
