Introducing the Skift Health Score: Assessing the Viability of 100 Public Travel Companies Each Month

Skift Research is excited to announce the launch of the Skift Health Score that will provide detailed insight into the performance and long-term strength of 100 leading travel businesses every month.

The Skift Health Score is a proprietary metric that assesses the strengths of public travel companies. Our current version includes scores for 100 travel companies across hospitality, airline, cruise, and online travel and distribution sectors. This follows the launch of the Skift Recovery Index from our team, a real-time measure of where the travel industry at-large stands in recovering from the pandemic.

The Health Score ranges on a scale of 0–100, calculated by selecting and weighting 23 individual indicators that are core to a company’s overall strength. All the 23 indicators fall under three categories, each a crucial component for a company’s overall health.

• Survivability: how prepared each company is to weather the current Covid-19 crisis.
• Current Performance: how each company is operating at present.
• Future Prospects: how well-positioned each company is to return to growth in a post-coronavirus world.

Top Travel Companies for July 2020

According to our measure, the three highest scoring travel businesses in July 2020 are Booking Holdings, Marriott International, and Hilton Worldwide.

It should perhaps be no surprise that Booking Holding tops our Skift Health Score list. As the largest online travel agency in the world, it has over $7 billion of cash in the bank, making it highly survivable. We also think that Booking’s prospects in the recovery are better than many of its online travel peers. Booking has been one of the best run online travel sites, consistently generating a ~40% EBITDA margin (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). This puts Booking in a good position to outperform booking site peers in a recovery.

The full top 10 list with company write-ups is available to subscribers and consists of two online travel and distribution businesses, three in hospitality, four airlines, and a cruise line. Eight of the 10 are based in North America with one business in Europe and another in South America.

You can find the overall Health Score as well as the sub-category scores for the top ten companies by visiting our Skift Health Score site.

Skift Research Subscribers Have Access To

100 Company Coverage
Total health scores as well as sub-category scores for all 100 public travel companies we track.

Deeper Analysis Reports
We will provide regular reports diving into specific sectors, scores, or companies moving forward.

Monthly Data Updates
We will incorporate new available data and update the Health Score on a monthly basis.

Quarterly Highlight Reports
We will publish quarterly reports to highlight key changes and trends as they appear.

Easy Access
The full data set is available as datasheets in PDF format and in an interactive format on our Health Score home page.