UPDATED: Recession fallout: Declines expected in air, hotel costs ... or maybe not

When the going gets tough, the once-tough start discounting. Just as retailers are going to be discounting heavily this holiday season, the forecasts for travel costs next year are coming in and the trend is .... down. At least that's the view from Egencia, the corporate travel unit of online travel agency Expedia Inc.. Egencia is predicting double-digit declines in air fares and hotel rates in major travel markets, including Philadelphia. Read more here.

After seeing that story in Business Travel News online, in comes an e-mail news release from the National Business Travel Association that says travel costs are going up next year. NBTA's data is based on an online survey of their travel-buyer members conducted between Sept. 15 and Oct. 21, and other data. Here's a guess at one reason the results of these two grouos are so different: Perhaps the NBTA survey time period was too early to pick up the really gloomy forecasts of a prolonged recession.