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 regarding October 2020:
 | Avg Trip Spend (2 days) | $993.92 |  (+8%) | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $418.66 | (+7%) | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $403.19 |  (+0.9%) | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $172.07 | (+0.4%) |
There was also a 0.82% increase in trips taken from September 2020 to October 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 **
- While we did not see trips for October increase significantly from September, we did retain the massive +10% jump in total trips taken last month. This shows a nice stable plateau at current levels. Given rising COVID levels in the United States as well as new lockdowns in European nations, it is comforting to see that travel is holding stable at the moment.
- Average air spend went up again, this time with very few extra new trips being processed. A 7% increase in airfare is enough to speculate on slightly longer business trips being taken here and there. It may also be attributed to the beginning of a comeback for airfare itself.
- The increase in average trip spend is tied directly to the increase in air spend. We will be keeping a close eye on how the holiday season may affect both hotel and air tickets in the coming months.
- Likely the most exciting takeaway is that October 2020 is the first month since we have been keeping track that none of our metrics decreased in any way. While hotel and car remained stable, they did still see minor increases. We will take that as a plus, and hope it continues into November.
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.
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.
