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.
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 September 2022 travel index:
 | Avg Trip Spend | $1266.22 |  4% | |
 | Avg Air Spend | $655.30 | 4% | |
 | Avg Hotel Spend | $403.32 | 9% | |
 | Avg Car Rental Spend | $207.60 |  -2% |
There was also a 2% Increase in processed trips taken from August 2022 to September 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 **
Cornerstone is excited to announce that we are working on automating and expanding the Cornerstone Index. Above is the monthly breakdown for September 2022. Because of this, the travel index numbers may fluctuate within a small margin as we evaluate and filter our data inclusions. We are going to be making room for new categories (such as average nights per hotel stay and average days per car rental), and these may also affect how numbers are presented in future index digests. Stay tuned for more updates!
September 2022 Analysis
- This month may look a bit different from previous months as we are working hard on our data inclusions and anonymization so that we can roll out the next version of the Cornerstone Travel Index. As such, the percentage increases and decreases are not compared to the posted numbers of last month, but to the numbers we have recalculated from last month with the data we are seeing internally now. The new travel index is shaping up nicely, so stay tuned to be the first to see all of the new features and categories!
- There was a 2% increase in trips taken, which to us means steady growth. Since we already surpassed last year’s total travel volume, everything from here on out is YOY growth as well. We’ll be heading into the holidays soon, so we all know that means a slump in business travel as our industry ramps down for the year, but for now, we love to see this number continue to climb.
- Prices went up a bit this month, but that’s healthy. One metric we’re starting to track that will be included in the next Cornerstone Travel Index is “Nights Per Hotel Stay”, which decreased slightly last month from 3.08 nights per stay to 3.03. “Days Per Car Rental” stayed almost exactly the same going from 4.43 days to 4.42 days. What this tells us is that business trips in both August and September remained nearly identical in terms of length. Total hotel stays for the month were also almost identical (0.6% increase), and car rentals dipped slightly with a 4% decrease.
Information about 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.