April weather impact was incredibly unfavorable with Golf Playable Hours (GPH) down 21% compared to year ago. This brought the Year-to-Date (Ytd) weather impact to -11% vs. year ago marking a turn for the worse after being weather-neutral through March. Regional breadth for the YtD period also swung to the negative at 1.1.3 with 18 regions having favorable weather offset by 24 regions with unfavorable weather (3 in the neutral zone with all 45 regions now “in season” using Pellucid’s weather-based rules). The one bright spot in the YtD weather performance is that the poor weather continues to be primarily concentrated in weekdays vs. weekends with weekend GPH off only 1% offset by dramatically lower weekday GPH of -14% vs. year ago.
Looking back on March rounds demand as reported by Golf Datatech/NGF to calculate % Utilization, the other good news is that, despite a very weather unfavorable month, rounds held up better than expected causing an increase in the Utilization Rate of 5 pts to 57% for the month (comprised of a 6% decrease in Rounds Played against a 14% decrease in Capacity Rounds). For the YtD period, Utilization registered 54% (comprised of a 4% increase in Rounds Played against flat Capacity Rounds) which is a 2 point increase vs. the 2010 benchmark utilization rate of 53%. Among the YtD market utilization “winners” are Dallas and Myrtle Beach while the “biggest losers” are Sacramento and San Francisco.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “Anyone who’s not living under a rock and watching the headlines knows that, outside of the death of Osama Bin Laden, weather has dominated the headlines across a sizeable portion of the US geography. While the industry is prone in the past to see poor weather in select regions of the country and call that “bad national weather”, April in fact lived up to the billing (as close as I’ve seen) of being bad all over. While I don’t want to take away from the credit due to facility operators who are figuring out a way to do damage control on the rounds played in the face of Mother Nature’s disfavor, I would be remiss in not pointing out that some portion of our utilization gain is coming from the predominant weekday weather unfavorability. This is giving the operators a small window of opportunity on the high volume/high value weekends to make up some ground on rounds. Joe Steranka asked me in March if we could track the weekday vs. weekend performance differential for weather and the answer is “Yes” and it provides a vital clue to variances in utilization.”
On the facility golf fees revenue side via the March PGA PerformanceTrak numbers, the YtD period showed a 5% gain comprised of a 7% increase in rounds offset by a 2% decline in rate at the All Facility level. Leading the revenue increase was Private facilities with a 10% gain while the rounds increase was also driven by Private facilities at +11%. On the rate side, only Resort facilities have been able to hold rate with the decline being led by Muni/Mil/Univ facilities showing a 5% drop.
A broader and more detailed scorecard of the monthly key industry metrics can be found in Pellucid’s new digital magazine, The Pellucid Perspective. To register to get the current and future editions, go to http://www.pellucidcorp.com/utilities/guest.html, select any of the existing services for information and it will register you to receive it.
Parties interested in understanding and quantifying what part of rounds and revenue performance is due to ”controllable” vs. ”uncontrollable” factors (i.e. course owners, lenders, buyers, sellers, equipment manufacturers, retailers and service providers) can find more information on Pellucid’s weather capabilities at www.pellucidcorp.com.
Affordable weather impact tracking report options are available at regional level ($199/yr, 45 regions, 12 rpts), market level ($299/yr, 61 markets & 12 regions, 12 rpts) and individual facility level ($249, 3 years of history by month and day-of-week and current year forecast). For more specific information on how Pellucid’s Weather Impact capabilities answer key business performance questions, including a sample report and pricing, contact Jim Koppenhaver at jimk@pellucidcorp.com.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com
