Bookings Fall as Rates Rise for Both Business and Leisure Travel

Hotel bookings in June 2012 for business and leisure travel fell off last year’s levels globally and in North America, while rates for both channels continued a steady climb, according to The Pegasus View from Pegasus Solutions.

Corporate bookings dropped by double digits worldwide and in North America, while leisure bookings were down by a smaller margin.

It was the combined group of regions outside of North America that realized reservation growth for leisure travel, returning +0.8% booking growth over June 2011.

In the corporate market, global bookings dropped -10.6% over prior year as North America decreased -13.9%. Outside North America, corporate reservations volume was down -5.9%.

The leisure market saw smaller declines of -5.3% for global bookings and -6.1% for North America.

“Corporations and consumers are thinking hard about travel,” said David Millili, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions. “Both are spending, as evidenced by the ongoing steady rise in rates, but it has to be the right spend. Corporations still see value in the face-to-face business supported by corporate travel, but are taking time to consider what trips to take, when to take them and whom to send. Consumers are no different. They’re committed to traveling, but they’re taking the time to rethink and reshuffle travel dates, destinations, trip length, activities and, of course, hotels.”

While the volume of bookings was down, rates delivered an impressive performance in June, rising globally and in North America for both the business and leisure markets. The global corporate market saw a nearly +3.0% increase for the month, as North American rates doubled that performance, growing an even +6.0% over last year. Leisure rates were up, though at a less significant rate, climbing +2.2% globally and +1.9% in North America.

Data reported in The Pegasus View comes from billions of transactions processed monthly by Pegasus Solutions facilitating more than $16 billion a year in hotel transactions. It reflects data drawn from both GDS and ADS transactions, representing the business and leisure markets respectively for nearly 100,000 hotels worldwide.

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