Location data company Arrivalist has updated its popular Daily Travel Index (DTI), which is widely known as a leading indicator of travel activity. The updated DTI features three new improvements, including the addition of overnight stays data on the website, up to four years of trending travel data (2019-2022) available for free, and the ability to compare trending travel data – organized by destination – across all 50 states.
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Daily Travel Index (DTI) now allows users to isolate only the overnight visitors to a state and provides the year-over-year change in overnight travel to the destination. Simply select “Overnights” in the Trip Type filter and the system will recalibrate the index for overnight visitors only. (Graphic: Business Wire)
"This is a measure of true demand for overnight stays," said Arrivalist Founder and CEO Cree Lawson. "We've challenged ourselves to make it the fastest and most accurate trending data available to the industry.”
Industry trending data is usually grouped into buckets like overnight stays at hotels or overnight stays at vacation rentals. Since Arrivalist's data is based on location data, or the movement of computing devices (not booking or occupancy data), the company can measure all overnight stays, not just those in hotels or vacation rentals but also those staying with friends and relatives. Reporting real-time location data allows Arrivalist to provide overnight stay data at a faster pace than other sources.
The DTI comes from a panel of GPS devices which are observed taking road trips of 50 miles or more. Arrivalist measures trending data by all types of lodging (hotels, vacation rentals and even vacationers staying with friends and family) but decided to make the DTI feature representative of “true demand” or all overnight stays, regardless of type.
The improvements to Arrivalist’s free tool come just as another wave of the COVID-19 pandemic deals a blow to the U.S. travel industry.
“The first version of the DTI helped the industry keep the pulse of the recovery from the first round of COVID-19," said Lawson. "So many hotels asked us to add overnight stay trending data to the tool. We hope that releasing it now helps them plot a course back to normalcy and beyond."
Daily Travel Index Origins
Originally launched in April 2020 in the nadir of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Daily Travel Index was built as a free tool to help the travel industry track the pulse of travel's recovery. It has been picked up by many industry associations and the U.S. government and become the benchmark data set for U.S. road trip travel trends. The Daily Travel Index, and projections made from it, have been picked up by hundreds of media outlets since its inception.
How the Data is Calculated
Arrivalist’s methodology is based on a representative balanced panel of GPS signals representing road trips taken specifically in cars (excluding travel by air). A trip is measured as one where the user has travelled a minimum of 50 miles and spent a minimum of two hours at the destination. Commuter travel or other frequently repeated trips—i.e., cargo deliveries or other reoccurring activities—are excluded from the Daily Travel Index.
About Arrivalist
Arrivalist is the leading location intelligence platform in the travel industry. The company uses multiple location data sets to provide actionable insights on consumer behavior, competitive share, media effectiveness, and market trends. Over 200 travel marketers, including 100 cities, 40 U.S. states, and four of the top 10 U.S. theme parks, use these insights to inform media strategy, operations, and destination development. Arrivalist is headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco and Toronto.
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