Revenue Travel Footprint Calculator
A cohort of business travelers directs real money across airlines, hotels, restaurants, transport and venues. This is the reference method for sizing that gross footprint honestly — every input is yours to set, every scenario is labeled, and the result is the value of the decision, not a number any one partner "makes."
The number you've been pitched is almost always too big. Suppliers size "the travel economy" to sell you something — one inflated figure, no working, everything credited to them. We built the opposite on purpose: the same figure any vendor's deck starts from, but shown in full, split across every supplier and taxes, and labeled by scenario so you can see where it came from and defend it in a room. If this is the only place that sizes revenue-travel spend this way, treat that as the point — this is the honest version, and it is on your side.
Model a cohort's trip footprint
Results update live. Defaults are illustrative U.S. planning figures — replace them with your market's data (see the sources below). Airfare and lodging vary sharply by market and cabin; set them for your case.
Your realistic capture rate
Of the spend in your category, what share could you realistically win? Drag to model it.
Nothing is transmitted until you hit send in your own mail client. No inputs are collected.
How the math works — and what it is not
Airfare = travelers × (economy share × economy fare + premium share × premium fare). Lodging = travelers × nights × ADR. Meals = travelers × nights × the daily M&IE. Transport is per traveler; hosted events are a flat program budget. The total is the cohort's gross trip spend, distributed across airlines, hotels, restaurants, venues, transport companies — and taxes. No single brand receives the total, and gross spend is not profit. Your "capture" line applies your rate to your category only — a modeling assumption, not a promise.
The defaults are illustrative U.S. planning figures, not market averages for your case: airfare varies by cabin and route (consult GSA per-diem ceilings and your own fare data); ADR differs sharply by market — San Francisco is not San Jose — so set it for your specific city; meals track the GSA M&IE. A cohort that flies mostly premium, books luxury or last-minute, or hits conference-rate compression lands in the labeled premium / high-end scenario, which can run well above the mixed-cabin baseline. Set the inputs honestly and the tool shows the range.
Why this is here, and why it's built this way: the point of The Sales Traveler is that claims are only worth what the evidence behind them supports. Sizing the travel economy is normally done to travelers and buyers — a single dramatic figure engineered to justify a price, with the working hidden. We hold the definition instead, and we hold it to the reader's benefit: this tool refuses the one big number, shows the arithmetic, labels the scenario, and separates gross trip economics from anything attributable to us or to any partner. That is the same Promised-vs-Delivered discipline we hold vendors to, turned on the commercial case itself — which is why a vendor can license reach here but never a friendlier number. See the independent Index Desk, score a specific trip with the Trip ROI Scorecard, or read how scoring stays independent at /governance/.