Pre-holiday shopping drives leisure travel revenue to record high increase

Leisure travel figures rallied in October 2010 after a slight dip in September 2010, according to The Pegasus View from Pegasus Solutions.

Pre-holiday travel shopping drove global leisure travel revenue to a record high increase for the year of nearly +15% over 2009, as bookings through the channel made via predominantly leisure alternative distribution systems (ADS) returned to double-digit growth of more than +10%. According to data reported in The Pegasus View the returning online shopper also helped leisure look-to-book ratios soar to around +60% over 2009. Today’s common look-to-book ratio is almost 3,000 to 1, as tracked through the billions of transactions processed each month by Pegasus for approximately 90,000 hotels worldwide, which means around 3,000 information requests are processed by a hotel for each individual booking made.

 “Holiday travel shopping has already resulted in October booking and revenue increases for the leisure hotel segment, and a slight slowdown for the corporate segment,” said Mike Kistner, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions. “Forward-looking data we’re reporting also points to an improved holiday season over last year with booking volumes potentially more than +10% above 2009, and rates more than +5% higher in November and December. Hotels would do well to take this time to check and re-check their content and systems to make sure they’re ready to catch the coming business and manage the leisure booker’s aggressive shopping habits.”

October’s corporate travel booking growth eased somewhat from September’s jump of +25.2%, but still grew compared to 2009 by more than +20%. Average daily rates (ADR) rose +6.5% globally, and a near-record +9.0% outside North America. Unlike the leisure market, length of stay (LOS) and booking lead times continued to outpace 2009, with forward-looking data from the global distribution systems (GDS) suggesting corporate travel will continue at the same or greater pace through Q2 2011.