ARC and Expedia Release 2018 Annual Global Air Travel Outlook

Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), in collaboration with Expedia, Inc., today released its fourth annual comprehensive study of worldwide air travel trends: The 2018 Air Travel Outlook Report. ARC and Expedia together conducted an original analysis of over one billion flights to spot trends that can help leisure and business flyers determine the best personal choices between the myriad of available air travel options. Egencia, the business travel company of Expedia, also provided analysis and commentary on corporate travel for this report.

ARC contributed detailed insights into changing travel patterns-such as the shift to longer advance purchases-and the resulting benefits to travelers. Some of the key findings from this study include:

• The advance purchase window for cost-effective ticket purchases continues to gradually increase as a result of strong demand. Business travelers are also beginning to understand this shifting dynamic, resulting in long-haul, premium flights being booked further in advance.
• For most economy or premium air travel, booking more than 30 days ahead is a good strategy for purchasing lower priced tickets.
• With few exceptions around the world, lower airfares for international and U.S. domestic economy seats were booked on a Sunday.
• The busiest gateways into the U.S. are New York, Los Angeles and Miami, while other gateway cities continue to see strong traffic, signaling continuing demand for international travel into the U.S.

The complete study is available free online here.

Chuck Thackston, ARC's managing director of data science and research, stated: "It's well understood that consumers who possess relevant information in tune with their personal preferences before they shop, will be more confident and likely to make a final purchase. With our continued strong relationship with Expedia, including Egencia, ARC is able to provide these broad-based insights on travel around the world - both leisure and corporate - that supports the continued growth of air travel and the travel industry as a whole. The ability to see what is changing and provide actionable data and insights to ARC's customers and travelers worldwide is core to ARC's analytical capabilities."

Greg Schulze, senior vice president, Expedia commented, "Expedia is constantly looking for ways to improve the experience of booking travel. Finding patterns in data is at the core of what we do. Our algorithms use data science to analyze approximately 19 quadrillion potential flight itineraries and filter them to display the most relevant options for each journey. When it comes to saving on flights, booking early, and taking advantage of the other unique ways to save on Expedia will help people go places for less."

"Egencia is delighted to contribute to the ARC and Expedia annual report this year. Using ARC's data on premium travel demand, we leveraged our unique end-to-end single global platform that covers both travel booking and policy to include insights based on Egencia's corporate client travel behaviour. This report provides several useful benchmarks to help our global corporate clients of all sizes better manage their travel budgets," said Tristan Smith, vice president of global transportation supply at Egencia.

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