At the national level, February registered a meaningful decrease vs. the same month last year as Playable Hours (GPH) registered down 5% vs. Year Ago (YA) at the national level. That outcome pares back the January gain from +18% to +6% for the Year-to-Period (YtD) two months into ’15. The YtD regional positive/negative breadth ratio was neutral at 1:1 with 8 regions having favorable weather against 7 regions with unfavorable weather (5 regions slipped into the neutral zone of +/- 2%, the remaining 25 regions are out-of-season). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, weekends are up more than weekdays. Looking to the year-end forecast for GPH, the current call is up slightly vs. ’14 and basically flat to the 10-yr average. The supporting figures for the 2015 full-year comparative GPH for Total US, the comparison to the 10-yr average and the day-of-week breakdowns are available to Weather Impact Tracking report purchasers or Pellucid Publications Members via the Client Login section at the Pellucid website (go to www.pellucidcorp.com for information or to subscribe and we’ll send you a sample of the 2014 1st half actual results to review).
Looking back at January rounds played as reported by Golf Datatech/NGF to calculate the facility % Utilization Rate (UR), the positive rounds demand figure (+5%) paled in comparison to the very favorable weather (+18%) resulting in a sharp decline in Utilization. For the YtD period, the figures are identical given we have only one month reported. Following a similar pattern that we’ve seen, rounds follow weather directionally but not necessarily in magnitude of increase or decrease. The supporting figures are also contained in the Weather Impact Tracking report or Pellucid Publications Membership monthly update.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “After a solid start weather-wise in January, Mother Nature decided to take back a sizeable part (but not all) of that favorability. While we’ve seen the national weather stories and pictures of Boston, the New York City area, Chicago etc. getting hammered by snow and cold, none of that really matters to us in the golf industry in February. Of more interest (and the reason we built the Weather Impact service) is what happened on the SE Coast (tough month for GPH ~50% declines including Atlanta), Florida (gave back most of the Jan gains), Texas (general improvement actually), the Desert SW (mixed bag) and the California Coast (played to a draw). Looking back at January, we had a different perspective than PerformanceTrak which called the month basically weather neutral (i.e. rounds demand followed weather linearly) while we report that the rounds demand significantly trailed the 18% GPH gain. This isn’t surprising given that looking back over the 5-yr range of Performance Factors (PGA’s version of Utilization but indexed to 100), their index has never broken out of the 95-105 trading range. In other words, in PerformanceTrak land, rounds and weather always behave in lockstep. You can be the judge of that mathematical likelihood.”
A broader and more detailed scorecard of the monthly key industry metrics, including the Revenue and Rate figures, can be found in Pellucid’s free digital magazine, The Pellucid Perspective. To register to get the current and future editions, go to Pellucid Mailing List, fill in the information and you’ll be registered for the next edition on 3/15/15.
Intelligent, curious and courageous industry stakeholders wanting the detailed metrics and monthly updates on weather impact at the national, regional and market level as well as utilization and the full year forecast numbers have two subscription options:
• Subscribe to the National Weather Impact Analysis Tracking service ($199, 12 reports annually) or
• Subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership (Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2013 State of the Industry, 2013 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, National Weather Impact Analysis Tracking, 2013 Top 25 US Golf Markets reports, Golf Participant Base Projection analysis) for $495 annually.
For individual facility owner/operators who need facility-level history, current year results by month and day-of-week and full year forecast data, Pellucid/Edgehill’s self-serve, web-delivered, real-time weather impact service product, Cognilogic, is your answer. It’s available for $240 for the year-end report and 12 month tracking or $120 for a single year-end report. For more information, contact Stuart Lindsay of Edgehill Golf Advisors (mailto:edgehillgolf@msn.com) or click here Order Cognilogic.
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