March weather lowered the boom notching a 20% decline in Available Rounds at the national level vs. Year Ago (YA). That negates most of our Feb YtD favorability bringing the YtD figure down to +2% through March (from +31% through February). Regional breadth remained balanced at 1:1 with 12 regions with favorable weather “comps” and 12 unfavorable (the out-of-season or neutral zone regions of +/- 2% represented the remaining 21 regions). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, weather favorability is exclusively contained in weekdays vs. weekends representing a continuing headwind in day-of-week distribution. With 3 months gone and 9 to go regarding weather one always wants to know, “What does the balance-of-year forecast portend?” Pellucid subscribers have access each month to our forecast for ’17 year-end GPH for Total US, the comparison to the 10-year average, the regional breadth details and the day-of-week breakdowns via the Geographic Weather Impact Tracking report or Pellucid Publications suite through 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 register for more information and in exchange we’ll send you a sample of the ’16 1st half actual results to review).
Rounds demand data for February published by Golf Datatech was basically flat (+1%) vs. YA. This was an unexpected “left turn” as the previously published Available Rounds figure for the month was +32% so something strange happened in the month whereby rounds didn’t follow the positive weather upward. This significant lag produced a 12 point decline in Utilization vs. the ’16 YE figure. We’ll have to wait and see if this is a one-time blip or something more significant surfacing. For the YtD period, we see the same dichotomy (driven largely by only having 2 months of results) as Available Rounds are up 30%+ while Rounds gains are just 3%. 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, “March was one of those months where you have to ask several diagnostic questions to figure out what exactly happened. When we look at the map, there’s not as much red as one would expect for this sharp a decline. This is due to the fact that we lost considerable Available Rounds in the shoulder-season markets vs. our 12-month season markets. The Southeast Coast got hit pretty hard while Florida was a draw across the state, Texas had a good month, the SW was level and California saw gains vs. YA. Where we got hammered was comparing against last year’s favorable March weather in the northern climes and those regions’ results ganged up on and overcame the full-year market positives. One of the reasons we track the 10-year average is to provide a perspective on how much abnormal “comps” are influencing our view. That insight tells us that March was behind the 10-year average in addition to significantly trailing last year’s inflated value. So, Mother Nature wasn’t kind to us in March but she wasn’t grossly unkind to us vs. her long-term behavior. As noted above, the other slightly alarming factor is the February Utilization which gave us basically no demand uptick against a 30%+ gain in Available Rounds. This suggests that either our calculation or Datatech’s was seriously flawed for the month or a disconnect has occurred between these two values which have tracked pretty consistently (in both direction and general magnitude) for the past 3+ years. We’ll have to wait for the March rounds figures to see if it’s a blip or a (new) problem.”
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 4/15/17.
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:
• a href=”http://www.pellucidcorp.com/purchase-reports/product/12-monthly-national-regional-key-market-tracking”>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
