I am trying to understand seasonality within travel industry - specifically hotel/car rental. October seems to be a huge month but I don't know why - conferences, companies fiscal cycle, pricing wars, ptnr bonus?????
Any ideas

What evidence/experience do you have that suggests that October is a busy month? My guess is that July and August, followed closely by June, see the bulk of FF flights/stays/rentals. Any holiday period, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years in particular, probably also see a lot. It would be interesting if InsideFlyer did a study of this to see how award flights are distributed over a year.

I am doing a profile on car rental transactions during a calendar year. Yes - the natural peaks are there, but OCT is unusually high for both rentals and rentals with a request for partner miles/points. ??

in Western Europe school holidays (= busy flying especially on weekends, also transatlantic):

X-mas-New Year
2 weeks in february
2 weeks around/after Easter
5 weeks Juli-August
2 weeks OCTOBER

Seems like maybe you have access to some "inside" information on the industry. If you do, it would help to know what country and/or states see the higher than normal car rental volume for October. That might give us some clues as to why.

In the US, October does have one holiday - Columbus day - which a fair number of people don't have to work, thus creating a nice 3-day weekend. Alamo has had this weekend blacked out nationwide for using miles/point awards for at least the last three years. In the northeast, and in many other parts of the US as well, October marks the last sustained period of nice weather before winter sets in. If your October data shows numerous short (i.e., 2 or 3 day weekend) rentals, this may support people feeling the urge to get away one last time before the cold. If the rentals/requests are for longer periods of time, something else is probably going on.

Is there anything you can share with us to help us narrow the possibilities?

I go to Las Vegas once a year in the Fall for a very large convention. I have read that the Fall is when many trade shows are held. Maybe this is why October is so full?

if leisure/holiday times is at stakes: the statistics of Dieneyworld or -land show, that october is busy.

There may be an abundance of conventions/trade shows in October, but it's not clear that attendees would be renting cars (most conventions are held in large metro areas where cars are not necessary) and even less clear that they would be using award miles/points for a business trip. Perhaps they are combining business and leisure travel.

I took a look at techexpo.com (a month by month listing of high-tech industry conferences). September seems to be the champ for conferences! A rough analysis suggests that September has about 33% MORE conferences than October. Both August and November have about 33% fewer conferences than October (i.e. August and November have 50% fewer conferences than September). It is only one data point for a single class of industry, and on only web site, but it seems representative. Seems to me something else is driving high rental usage in October.