Rates paid for leisure hotel stays grew by +4.2% over 2012 in August, according to Pegasus Solutions, the world’s largest processor of electronic hotel transactions. While leisure booking volumes fell just short of 2012 levels, the corporate market maintained enough productivity to post positive year-to-date gains in both bookings and rates over the prior year.

“Leisure data, drawn from bookings made through online channels, showed leisure bookings were within -0.2% of August 2012. Year-to-date, bookings in the channel increased by +2.2%, with rates growing at a pace of +2.8% globally. Bookings are expected to slow this month, but will rebound to prior year levels with potential gains in October and December, as rates will likely climb between +2% and +4% globally.

New opportunities for hotels to engage directly with the online consumer are emerging almost monthly,” said David Millili, chief executive officer of Pegasus Solutions. “Beyond the desktop and mobile presences, hotels need to ‘own’ their digital presence to leverage opportunities for direct bookings through tools like the Google Carousel and TripAdvisor’s soon to be released TripConnect. Our data shows guests are booking online, and paying solid rates. It’s up to the hotel to steer those bookings back to the brand site.”

Global corporate travel continued to outperform prior year overall. Bookings were within -1.5% of August 2012, but set a year-to-date growth pace of almost +3.0%. Rates paid for the month matched prior year globally, but sustained a year-to-date lead of +0.6% over 2012. These increases for both bookings and rates are expected to continue at or above prior year into autumn.

Data reported by Pegasus Solutions comes from billions of transactions processed monthly for nearly 100,000 hotel clients, facilitating more than $16 billion a year. The Pegasus View, produced quarterly, is the only industry report to reflect data drawn from both GDS and ADS transactions, representing the business and leisure markets respectively. Pegasus’ PegasusView Market Performance business intelligence is a monthly reporting product augmenting the global data provided quarterly in The Pegasus View.