Skift Take
After the ugliest year in travel history, 4Q 2020 earnings and other more recent data points suggest that the industry has turned a corner and is beginning to recover.
Skift Research updated its Skift Health Score for April 2021. This month takes a look at how publicly traded travel companies fared during their fourth quarter earnings.
The Skift Health Score is a proprietary metric that assesses the strengths of public travel companies. Our current version includes scores for 94 travel companies across hospitality, airline, cruise, and online travel and distribution sectors.
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 April 2021
Skift Health Scores perked up in April as hopes for a travel recovery solidified and companies moved past their dismal summer 2020 financial performance.
The severity of localized COVID-19 outbreaks continues to be the primary driver or inhibitor of travel industry performance. Differences in the success of government lockdowns and quarantine measures had already been driving a regional divergence between companies. And now, the uneven rollout of a COVID vaccine has only exacerbated those geographical differences.
Europe, which had been successfully locked down when we published this report last, has since seen a resurgence in Covid cases, while the U.S.’ vaccination program has outpaced most of the world leading to travel optimism. As a result, U.S. companies surged to the top of our Skift Health Score rankings, displacing their European counterparts.
The top four companies of our Skift Health Score for April 2021 are Hilton Holdings, Booking Holdings, Airbnb, and Marriott International. All are based in the United States and focus on the hospitality industry. Booking Holdings, admittedly, still primarily operates in the European market, but it has been taking advantage of the current state of disruption to gain market share in the United States.
Booking has fallen from the number one spot to number two. While Intercontinental Hotels (formerly #2) and Ryanair (formerly #3) fell in the rankings. Again, this is to be expected with the reversal in the relative success of Europe and America’s COVID-fighting efforts since last summer.
You can find the top ten healthiest travel companies in April 2021 as well as health scores and sub-category scores for 94 different travel companies by visiting our Skift Health Score site.
Skift Research Subscribers Have Access To
94 Company Coverage
Total health scores as well as sub-category scores for all 94 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.
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Our daily coverage of the global travel industry. Written by editors and analysts from across Skift’s brands.
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