GDS jump: start of business travel recovery?

A new report from The Pegasus View indicates that GDS bookings increased approximately 3 percent in February of this year as compared to the same period in 2009, with North America showing a very strong performance with an 8.59 percent booking increase.

The latest edition of The Pegasus View is now available for your review. The report indicates that a business travel recovery may be in the works, measured by hotel booking volumes, net revenue, and average daily rates (ADR).

As the only hospitality industry data report that draws from both global distribution system (GDS) and alternative distribution system (ADS) bookings, February’s The Pegasus View is based on the three billion transactions Pegasus processed during the month for more than 95,000 hotel distribution customers worldwide.

Globally, the GDS channel, which consists predominantly of business travel bookings, realized February 2010 bookings increases of +3.59 percent, a jump in net revenue of +2.96 percent, and a rise in ADR of +0.95 percent over February 2009. North America returned strong performance on the booking front, surpassing February 2009 by +8.58 percent. Other regions, not realizing the bookings boost, did sustain higher length of stays (2.21 versus 2.14) than North America, and ADR that has trended 15 to 21 percent higher than North America for the last 14 months.

“Hotels worldwide have been holding their breath for business travel to recover,” said Mike Kistner, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions. “February figures are suggesting they can possibly exhale… a little. Regionally, the challenges hotels face in this recovery are different. North America is still contending with length of stay, which means that corporate travel is occurring, just in a lessened capacity. All other regions, however, have the rates and length of stay hoped for in North America but are not attracting the same volumes.

Click here for a full report.