US Transactions Remain Down But Improving

US Transactions as measured by ARC Tickets issued remain down. They have not returned to the levels of 2006/7/8 but are better than 2009. In looking at the 2010 numbers we can see that the trend is upwards. Y/Y numbers look encouraging.

Drilling into the numbers we can see that there has been healthy increases of the TMCs.



In fact they are now doing better than the OTAs in improved yields. This has good news for the agencies and also indicates that the OTAs improvement while still positive could possibly have run its course. There does of course remain a degree of revenue/yield pressure.

I think we can see that the airlines will start to review how their cost structure looks in the light of an improved transaction picture but with a still diminished yield.

Next month will be interesting - given the late Easter again it should show improved yields given the extra days of sale.

Cheers