Which Sectors of the Travel Industry Have Recovered the Most

Image: Travelers at the airport (photo by Eric Bowman)

by Mia Taylor
Last updated: 2:15 PM ET, Tue August 22, 2023

Last year marked an important post-pandemic turning point across the travel industry. Whether it was airlines, hotels, car rental companies, or OTAs, the recovery from the COVID-19 slump began firmly taking shape.

The second annual Big Book of Travel Data, published by Allianz in partnership with IdeaWorksCompany, proves as much.

The extensive, 120-page report provides a deep wealth of industry data from all angles including deep dives into individual airline performance and traffic, hotel group performance, individual hotel brand performance, hotel room revenue, and OTA bookings.

But perhaps the most telling graphic in the entire study is the 2021 to 2022 sector-by-sector comparison of annual revenue. All of the major travel industry sectors showed significant revenue growth between the two years.

The booking value of the top 10 OTAs, for instance, increased from $288.4 billion in revenue in 2021 to $383.1 billion in 2022. That’s a 32.8 percent increase.

Revenue for the top 10 airlines in 2021 meanwhile, was $185.5 billion. But by 2022, that figure had jumped to $310.4 billion. That’s an even larger year-over-year increase than OTA’s of 67.4 percent.

Hotel groups experienced an equally notably year-over-year revenue improvement of 46.5 percent. The top 10 hotel groups earned $136.1 billion in 2021 and that figure ticked up to $199.3 billion by 2022.

Not to be overlooked, rental car companies also rode the recovery wave. The revenue of the top 10 rental car companies was $46.9 billion in 2021, a figure that increased to $59 billion in 2002. That’s a 25.9 percent increase in revenue.

“By every measure, ours is a travel industry in rapid recovery from the ravages of the pandemic,” says the study. “The data shows that airlines, hotels and other travel providers last year leapt from the pandemic plunge of 2020.”

This is the second edition of the Big Book of Travel Data. The report is based on a review of 300 airlines and a review of the world’s leading hotel groups, car rental companies, and online travel agencies.