What we do
Travel Statistics Bureau publishes open statistics on what travel costs and how it is changing: flights, hotels, cruises, passports and visas, travel insurance, travel jobs and the travel industry. Today that is 78 research pages in 8 topics, each built from official records and each figure footnoted to its source.
Travel shapes household budgets, jobs and whole economies, yet many of the numbers people quote are hard to trace. We want every number on this site to be one you can check, cite and reuse.
How we are organized
Travel Statistics Bureau is not a registered non-profit organization.
Not-for-profit · Independent · Run by volunteers · Free to use · Contributions cover hosting and running costs
We carry no advertising, and no company pays for, reviews or approves what we publish.
Our team
Every research page names its author and is reviewed by our editor before publication.
Daniel R. Whitcombe
Editor-in-Chief, Travel Statistics Bureau · Virginia, United States
- Former federal consular-fee policy analyst
- Credentialed actuary
- 18 years in travel-insurance underwriting
Daniel Whitcombe leads the editorial team and sets the publication's standards for sourcing, methodology and fact-checking. He spent nine years in federal consular affairs, where he worked on the cost-recovery models behind passport and visa fee schedules and briefed legislative staff on fee-rule changes. After leaving government, he moved into travel-insurance underwriting, holding senior actuarial roles at two international insurers and building the pricing frameworks for trip-cancellation, medical-evacuation and passport-loss coverage sold across North America and Europe. He holds a master's degree in public policy and a full actuarial fellowship credential. As editor, Daniel reviews every analysis before publication and personally maintains the site's passport-fee and insurance-premium datasets, which are updated whenever a government or major carrier revises its rates. He is a frequent commentator on consumer travel costs and has given testimony to state insurance regulators on policy transparency.
Editor. Reviews every research page before publication.
Capt. Helen Askew
Senior Author, Aviation · Hampshire, United Kingdom
- Airline captain, 12,000+ flight hours
- Former airline Head of Flight Safety
- Master's in air transport management
Helen Askew writes the publication's aviation coverage, from airline reliability rankings to fare and fee analysis. She flew for 21 years as a commercial pilot, the last eight as a captain on wide-body long-haul routes, accumulating more than 12,000 flight hours on both major narrow-body and wide-body aircraft families. Off the flight deck, Helen served as Head of Flight Safety for a major European carrier, where she ran the airline's safety-management system, led incident investigations and represented the company in working groups with national and regional aviation regulators. She holds a master's degree in air transport management and is a fellow of a leading aeronautical professional society. Her writing draws on primary data (regulator filings, operational performance reports and airline financial disclosures) rather than press releases. She is regularly quoted by trade and consumer media on airline safety, cancellations and passenger rights.
Author.
Anneliese Kurz
Lead Analyst, Hotels and Hospitality · Vaud, Switzerland
- Graduate of a top-ranked hospitality business school
- Former VP Revenue Management, 400-property hotel group
- Certified hotel-industry analyst
Anneliese Kurz analyzes hotel pricing, occupancy trends, loyalty-program value and the economics of the lodging sector. A graduate of one of Europe's leading hospitality business schools, she began her career in front-of-house operations before moving into revenue management, where she built demand-forecasting models for luxury and midscale properties. She rose to Vice President of Revenue Management for an international hotel group with more than 400 properties, overseeing pricing strategy across Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. During that period she led the group's response to two major demand shocks and developed the internal benchmarking system still used to compare property performance against market data. Anneliese holds a professional certification in hotel-industry analytics and has lectured on revenue strategy at her alma mater and at industry conferences. Her analyses rely on industry benchmark data, public company filings and her own modeling, with methodology disclosed on every piece.
Author.
Dr. Marcus Oyelaran
Senior Researcher, Travel HR and Workforce Mobility · Ontario, Canada
- PhD in organizational behavior
- Senior-level HR certification
- Former Global Mobility Director, 60,000-employee multinational
Marcus Oyelaran researches how organizations manage business travel, relocation, duty of care and the workforce behind the travel industry itself. He holds a PhD in organizational behavior from a leading Canadian business school, where his dissertation examined burnout and retention among frequent business travelers. Before joining the publication, Marcus spent 12 years in corporate human resources, most recently as Global Mobility Director for a multinational with roughly 60,000 employees in 40 countries. He designed travel and relocation policies, negotiated with travel-management companies and relocation vendors, and led the firm's duty-of-care program, including crisis response for staff caught in regional emergencies. He holds a senior-level HR professional certification and sits on the research advisory network of a global business-travel industry association. His reports combine survey data he collects directly from HR and travel managers with public labor statistics, and he has been cited in reporting on airline and hotel staffing shortages.
Author.
How we work
Our editorial principles explain where the numbers come from, how we cite them, how we label our own calculations and how we check every page.
Contact
Write to contact@travelstatisticsbureau.com with corrections, data questions or press requests.