LEISURE IS BOOMING

Pegasus Solutions reports that North America’s corporate bookings struggled to maintain the record global pace of 8.8%, instead posting a more modest 5.0% increase over April 2012. On the other hand, the North American leisure market surged ahead by an impressive 7.0%, surpassing the global rate of 6.2%. Even with a boost from the Easter holiday last April, similar to the lift in March of this year, April 2013 set a solid year-to-date global growth pace of 4.0% for the corporate and 5.4% for the leisure market. In North America, the year-to-date growth rate also remained positive through April, reaching 2.4% for business, and 6.8% for leisure. David Millili, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions, said: “The region’s evergreen destinations like New York and Los Angeles remain strong for business and leisure. But, current transactions evidence double digit year-over-year bookings growth through August for North American leisure destinations like Mexico City (51.1%), Nashville (19.7%), Denver (15.8%) and Portland (10.3).” And he observed that: “Domestic demand is delivering the most significant portion of these bookings, followed by neighbouring Canada and Mexico. For certain cities, the UK, Germany, Japan and Australia are also helping fuel growth.” Go to http://www.pegs.com for more.