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, 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 2021:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1388.89 |  +3% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $608.79 | +13% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $554.07 |  -3% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $226.03 | -4% |
There was also a 10% increase in processed trips taken from September 2021 to October 2021.
** 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 **
October 2021 Analysis
- Trips taken month-to-month keep increasing as we hit another record within the COVID recovery era. October 2021 saw almost double the trips taken compared to October 2020. Last month also saw the new highest number of trips processed and taken since we started tracking recovery numbers.
- Air prices have recovered almost entirely from their large dip last August. In fact, air prices are within one percent of their highest prices this year from June. Hotel and car prices are not very unchanged from last month. Hotel costs especially have remained stable, even though trip lengths dipped slightly.
- As the holidays draw closer, we will expect to see the seasonal dips in business travel typical of this time of year. It may be interesting to see how this plays out while concerns over the Delta Variant play out. That being said, October outperformed our initial expectations of “modest gains” over September.
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.
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.
