While a golfer’s fancy turns to Augusta in April, March weather will appeal more to operators as the month posted a Golf Playable Hours (GPH) gain of +23% vs. Year Ago (YA). That result capped a stellar Q1 as the Year-to-Date (YtD) now stands +20% through three months. The YtD regional positive/negative breadth ratio remained neutral at 1:1 with 13 regions having favorable weather against 11 regions with unfavorable weather (3 in the neutral zone of +/- 2%, the remaining 18 are out-of-season). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, favorability is relatively evenly distributed across weekends vs. weekdays. The key question is, “How much of this early season favorability will we retain by year end?” Pellucid subscribers know the answer to those questions because the supporting figures for the 2016 full-year comparative GPH for Total US, the comparison to the 10-year average and the day-of-week breakdowns are available to them in the Geographic Weather Impact Tracking report or Pellucid Publications suite via the Client Login section at the Pellucid website (go to www.pellucidcorp.com to subscribe or for more information; for information-seekers we’ll send you a sample of the ’15 1st half actual results to review).
Rounds demand data for February as published by Golf Datatech are showing some “growing pains” post the PerformanceTrak sunset with a number of markets reporting 1,000% gains and key geographies such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee and much of the NE not reporting. That said, at the national level they reported a gain of 12% in rounds demand for the month of February which was a solid and welcome gain. Comparing that result to the previously-reported GPH results, we saw a drop in Utilization as the weather posted significantly stronger gains. Utilization figures for the month at the National and 61 key Markets level are also available to Pellucid report subscribers.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “I always love the fact that the general media inevitably does a number of obligatory stories on the golf industry the week of The Masters and the Wall Street Journal once again obliged. The headline this year was “How Golf Got Out of the Woods.” Their support for our industry’s “recovery”? That there are a number of young golfers taking Tiger Woods’ place and the network viewership numbers don’t suck as badly now when Tiger’s not the main attraction. So, while they continue down that path, those of us in the industry are more concerned with (and elated about) the strong Q1 weather backdrop which handily beat last year and, importantly, also significantly beat the 10-yr Norm. Unfortunately it’s not all lollipops and unicorns as the favorable weather is more concentrated east of the Mississippi while the Western US is seeing a lot of red in the weather department. The advantage however of doing a national aggregation is we can quantify whether the net of “east up, west down” is positive or not and, when weighted by rounds contribution, the answer for Q1 ’16 is a resounding, “Positive.”
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 www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you’ll be registered for the next edition on 4/15/16.
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 Geographic Weather Impact Analysis Tracking service ($299, 12 reports annually at national, 45 weather regions and 61 key markets levels) or
• Subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership (Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2014 State of the Industry, 2013 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, Geographic Weather Impact Analysis tracking, 2014 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 unlimited annual access via the Cognilogic web portal 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.
You can order any of the above information services via Pellucid’s Online Store.
Contact:
Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
jimk@pellucidcorp.com
www.pellucidcorp.com
