Hotel bookings in June 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, released today by 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.
The Pegasus View reporting on June 2012 bookings is available online and by free subscription at www.pegs.com. 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 is the only industry report to reflect data drawn from both GDS and ADS transactions, representing the business and leisure markets respectively for nearly 100,000 hotels worldwide.
About Pegasus Solutions
Pegasus Solutions is the world’s lead provider of technology and services to hotels and travel distributors, serving nearly 100,000 hotels around the globe, and the majority of the world’s travel agencies. Offering award-winning solutions for booking, distribution, and commission processing services, Pegasus also offers a full array of strategic online marketing solutions and accommodation booking options through its Open Hospitality division. The company also delivers hotel marketing representation services through Utell® Hotels & Resorts, and powers the niche consumer website www.hotelbook.com™, which is dedicated to promoting independent and boutique hotels worldwide. Through its widely followed monthly data report The Pegasus View, Pegasus is also recognized as the only hospitality company to report regularly on both business and leisure bookings, for which it was awarded a Stevie Award in 2011.
Pegasus has 22 offices in 12 countries, including regional hubs in Dallas, Frankfurt, London, Madrid, New York, Sao Paulo, Singapore and Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information, please visit www.pegs.com, www.openhospitality.com, or www.utell.com.
