Washington -- ARC projects that the value of debit memos created in 2017 will decline 10.3% from 2016 levels. However, the number of debit memos created will edge upward.
ARC manager of settlement services Shelly Younger presented the projections at the organization's annual TravelConnect meeting here Friday.
According to the projection, debit memos in 2017 will amount to $130.2 million, down from $145.1 million a year ago. Meanwhile, ARC projects that the number of memos written will go up by 1%, meaning the figure will remain below 540,000.
The projections aren't infallible. At TravelConnect last year, ARC projected that the dollar value of debit memos for 2016 would decline 6.4% year-over-year, but the figure was ultimately $2.4 million, or 2%, higher than the 2015 total.
This year's projected decline in debit memo value comes as ARC and its Debit Memo Working Group have entered into the second phase of an effort to standardize debit memo reason codes, mapping 14 more carriers' debit memos into the latest version of its Memo Analyzer product. That brings to 23 the number of carriers that have debit memos mapped in Memo Analyzer. Those carriers -- which include United, Delta and American -- represent more than 80% of ARC's settlement volume. This month, ARC also launched a new version of its web-based processing and payment tool Memo Manager, which also has debit memo mapping for the 23 carriers.
ARC projects that one debit memo will be issued for every 335 tickets sold this year, down from one memo for every 305 tickets sold last year. A dollar's worth of debit memos will be issued for every $705 in airfare sold, according to the forecast.