The 2022 Power List. Photo Credit: Christos Georghiou/Shutterstock.com
To qualify for the Power List, a company typically has to have a minimum of $100 million in travel sales in the previous year.
However, due to an unprecedented drop in travel in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, Travel Weekly this year eliminated the threshold for companies that had already been on the Power List and for a handful of companies that the editors deemed would have made the threshold or are expected to meet it in 2022.
For purposes of this survey, sales are defined as gross sales of travel products worldwide, whether to consumers or to corporate travelers; the company must be the merchant of record on the transaction from a supplier's perspective. At least 15% of the sales volume must have been generated in the U.S.
Read the 2022 Power List.
The questionnaire was sent earlier this year to companies that had appeared on the list in previous years, had contacted Travel Weekly believing they qualified or had been in the news because of acquisitions or had grown for other reasons.
As has been the case for years, Travel Weekly requested that gross sales volume be certified by a company's owner, CEO or CFO.
Some companies that may have qualified opted not to participate; see our introduction, as well as notations regarding Expedia Group and Booking Holdings. While all cooperating listees did certify sales (or made them public), it must be kept in mind that even those numbers are difficult to verify because the great majority of travel sellers are privately held and under no obligation to disclose financial data.
Also, there is no commonly accepted standard for calculating sales volume, and there is no clearinghouse in the U.S. that tracks nonairline sales, as ARC does for airline sales. Where possible, Travel Weekly sought to confirm accuracy in the figures by, for example, reviewing responses for consistency and used whatever resources we had at our disposal to ensure accuracy.
The survey on which these rankings were based also included questions involving travel-related subsidiaries, percentage of sales from business and leisure, corporate structure and others.
There were several open-ended questions about recent and planned developments to which companies could reply in any way they felt appropriate. Responses determined the length of the profiles that accompany each agency.
There may be companies that should be on the list but escaped our attention. Representatives of such companies should email powerlist@travelweekly.com so we can send them a questionnaire for next year's Power List.
NOTE ABOUT THE 2022 POWER LIST: Some Power List companies
have resubmitted their numbers, which have resulted in changes in the
rankings. Read more about those changes.