That’s the leading point from PiperJaffray’s most recent industry report. As eternal optimists (we are, after all, entrepreneurs who quit big fat corporate jobs to start UpTake), we searched through their report looking for the positive data that might contradict the lead. We’re still searching…

A poll from Ipsos certainly didn’t help us find positive data either. If you found some positive data about online travel, please email us (pat at uptake.com or yen at uptake.com)

To the data!

Even the good news is relative: the majority of consumers (74%) in the PiperJaffray survey responded that they plan to leave their leisure travel plans unchanged or travel more! And that is 3% higher than in September. Those that plan to do less “only” outnumber those that plan to do more by 10% (26% vs 16%). Shouldn’t that be headline news – it sounds positive!

Do you expect to travel for leisure more or less in the next 12 months? (Source: PiperJaffray)

Well, the survey doesn’t ask how much consumers are planning to spend on those trips, and even if only 10% of consumers travel less, this decline can lead to dramatic drops in occupancies, prices and yields.

The report outlines how average daily rates and revenue per mile metrics are starting to slide. ADR is down YOY for Oct and Nov by 0.5 and 1.7% respectively and RevPAR (revenue per available room) is down 7% and 8.2% respectively.

U.S. Hotel Y/Y % Change (Source: Smith Travel Research, PiperJaffray & Co.)

The top 10 U.S. carriers have seen 4% and 7.7% declines in Oct and Nov RPM respectively.

Top U.S. Carriers- Revenue Passenger Miles Y/Y Change (Source: PiperJaffray)

The data on the business travel isn’t rosy either. Ipsos reports that the picture is bleaker in 2009 than 2008 with 40% of business travelers saying expect to travel less often versus 22% who expect to travel more.

The changing market doesn’t treat everyone equally, of course. Companies that are more focused on deals, lowest price and delivering value are outperforming their peers. As PiperJaffray points out, Priceline is the big winner as its no-service fee for air tickets and ‘name your price’ opaque offerings resonate in this economy.

Y/Y Change In Monthly Unique Users (Source: PiperJaffray)

It’s probably not a big leap to surmise that Kayak with its price meta-search and Hotwire with its opaque pricing are also performing well.

Still, even with the overall gloomy data on demand, occupancy and yield, travel is the largest online category and there is room for profitable businesses to be built if they can better address customer needs and can cost-effectively acquire customers. No doubt it will be harder, but travel remains the great escape and part of the traditional North American and Western European way of life -anniversaries will be taken, families will need to gather (whether they all want to or not!), consumers will have to unwind. It may be a potluck at the local campground instead of a posh catered affair or a three day trip instead of four, but western consumers still have to travel, eat and find a place to lay down their weary heads.

UpTake recently posted a bullish story on recent financings. The reality is we were a bit too bullish. The deals we discussed closed earlier this fall before the economy and travel continued its rapid decline. With that, here is the hard data that sadly contradicts our bullish post.

Recently, we were at the PhocusWright conference and attended the popular, fact-filled comScore and Yahoo Search presentation about today’s digital marketing landscape in travel. Based on data from comScore’s survey of 2M global Internet users, October was the biggest single month drop in consumer confidence EVER recorded with a decline of a 38.1%.

Consumer confidence falls by 38.1% (Source Yahoo/comScore)

This is even greater than in 1974 which slid down to 29.5%.

Online travel growth outpaces retail YTD (Source: comScore)

Worse, the drop comes on top of the slowest annual growth ever at a mere 10% YOY in the first three quarters.

Traffic site visitation was soft during summer months (Source: Yahoo/comScore)

Traffic was down across the travel industry with a 4% YOY decline led by online travel agencies at 14% and airlines at 8%.

There remains a glimmer of hope.  It was not down for travel information and research sites such as Fodor’s, UpTake, Real Travel, TripAdvisor, and Yahoo Travel. If traffic holds for travel research sites, they will have to excel at generating quality leads because unfortunately ad spending and reach took a downward plunge during the summer and fall season.

Display Ad Impressions Slide in Summer through Fall Season

Financing usually lags market data, and the market data isn’t pretty. So it might well be that Yapta, Vibeagent and PlanetEye snuck in under the proverbial wire, but then again maybe not. We believe there are a slew of new generation deal aggregators about to get funded including: proven teams at Dealbase and Voyij and a dream team of ex-Yahoos at a stealth company. Why do we believe two or three of them will they get funded? Because even in recessions, VCs love great teams, especially when the teams are focused on businesses that benefit from what continues to be a whopper of an economic downturn.