While it’s more often either rain or cold that hampers Golf Playable Hours (GPH), in July it turned out to be heat & humidity depressing GPH as the national level figure came in 2% below Year Ago (YA) reducing the Year-to-Date favorability to +2%. The YtD regional positive/negative breadth ratio remained neutral at 1:1 with 17 regions having favorable weather against 16 regions with unfavorable weather (the remaining 12 in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, weather now favors weekends vs. weekdays which now should shift to a slight tailwind to revenue (given weekend pricing is more favorable to the facility). With 7 months now in the books and weather continuing to be a positive indicator, the $64M question is, “How much of this weather favorability will we retain by year end?” Pellucid subscribers know the answer to this question 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 in the Geographic Weather Impact Tracking report or Pellucid Publications suite via the Client Login section at the Pellucid website. Cognilogic facility weather impact subscribers also know these figures for their individual facility (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 June as published by Golf Datatech reported the monthly figure at +5% vs. YA and the YtD level registering at +3%. Comparing that result to Pellucid’s previously-reported GPH results, we registered a solid gain in Utilization for the month (repeat of April’s positive performance, that’s 2 months of outperformance this year, maybe a trend emerging?) with increasing rounds demand outpacing the flat GPH results. For the YtD period, at the national level Utilization has managed to claw its way back to basically even with positive rounds demand nearly matching the favorable weather results. Utilization figures for the month at the National and 61 key Markets (including Pellucid’s designated Top 25 markets) level are also available to Pellucid Publications members and Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “July’s results highlight a modification we made in our Weather Impact formulas several years ago in that we needed to lower the absolute temperature threshold on the high end that disqualifies an hour and also add in the Heat Index for those situations of above average temperature combined with above average humidity. That enhancement showed up in this month’s results for key regions such as the SE Coast, Texas and the SW all of which took meaningful hits in GPH due to temperature variances on the high side. Hit particularly hard was the Desert SW (Phoenix and surrounding) where GPH fell 22% for the month and wiped out the entire YtD favorability in one month. I can personally attest to this as I spent the last week of the month in Sedona and even at 5K feet every day was above 95 degrees and less-than-optimal for golf. Looking back at June Utilization though, we had a pleasant surprise with a 5% gain in rounds demand against flat weather nationally which produced a Utilization gain of 2 points for the month. This was a repeat of the April phenomenon and is an encouraging sign of the industry’s ability to produce rounds gains beyond weather favorability. The next goal will be to put together enough of those monthly Utilization gains (akin to “hole euphoria”) to produce a Utilization gain for the season (“AKA round euphoria”).”
A broader and more detailed scorecard of the monthly key industry metrics 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 8/15/16.
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, 2015 State of the Industry, 2015 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 (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