July Golf Weather Impact: Flat in Golf’s “Apex” Weather Month
As an interesting trivia fact, July is the “apex month” for Golf Playable Hours for the industry due to the fact that the entire nation is fully participating and its proximity to the summer solstice date which delivers maximum daylight. July delivered the 2nd consecutive month of parity weather registering a fractional decline (-0.1%) for the month at the national level vs. Year Ago (YA). Similar to June, the silver lining is that we didn’t go backwards and the flat results improved the Year-to-Date (YtD) deficit by two points but it’s still significantly below YA at -7% comparatively.
Comparing July Golf Playable Hours (GPH) to the 10 year “norm” for the month nationally, it was also basically in line with that value. In regional breadth for the YtD period, the unfavorability remains widely distributed with a favorable/unfavorable breadth ratio of 1:4 with 8 weather-favorable regions countered by 30 weather-unfavorable regions (remaining 7 regions are in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at weather impact performance by day-of-week for the YtD period, the deficit is relatively balanced between weekdays and weekends while, within the weekend dayparts, Saturday vs. Sunday weather has been quite different (results by day-of-week and the figures for weekday and weekend available to Pellucid subscribers). The year-end forecast remained similar to the June crystal ball.
Pellucid subscribers know what that number is and whether we’ll gain back any of the lost weather ground in the remaining months of the year. If you’d like to join them in being in-the-know regarding those important details and having early-warning guidance for marketing and expense decisions, subscribe to the monthly Geographic Weather Impact report or our Cognilogic facility-level web-based information service by following the instructions and links at the end of this article.
Played Rounds data for June published by Golf Datatech was a “sideways” story when looked at in isolation registering -1% for the month vs. YA. The more insightful view, after factoring in weather, is that Utilization was off slightly due to Pellucid’s previously-reported slightly improved weather for the month. For the YtD period, Utilization continues to be favorable driven by smaller declines in Played Rounds vs. the decline in Available Rounds. Beneath this national picture, there are winners and losers in both Played Rounds and Utilization Rates among the 61 key Markets (including Pellucid’s designated Top 25 markets) and this next-level-detail of results is also available to Pellucid Publications members and Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, “In July we generally see moderation in the year-to-year comparisons at the national level as rainfall and heat variances don’t seem to be as significant and/or they cancel themselves out across the country when aggregating to the US level. That’s why the more detailed regional, state and markets information becomes more important over the summer to see where the individual “winners and losers” are. We did see several of our weather regions post double-digit gains in GPH (TX Central, Gulf Coast, FL South for example) while others posted inverse double-digit declines (Desert SW, No. VA etc.). For the YtD period, there are still very few green arrows on our weather map with most of those residing west-of-the-Rockies. Looking at June YtD results for Utilization at the 61 markets level, we continue the pattern of favorable breadth to gainers as rounds declines are shallower than weather unfavorability. The market breadth indicator improved slightly to 11:1 (33 markets showing Utilization gains against 3 markets showing declines with the remaining 25 occupying the neutral zone). Among Pellucid’s Top 25 US Golf Markets for the YtD period, 17 continue to show Utilization gains with Denver and Detroit leading the pack with near double-digit point gains. Again, if you want to know which of our Top 25 Golf Markets posted Utilization gains, how much and what the dynamics are behind those gains, just go to our website and get on the Monthly Weather Impact subscription or sign up for Cognilogic (facility-level access via the web).”
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 http://www.pellucidcorp.com/news/elist, fill in the information and you’ll be registered for the next edition on 8/15/18.
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($495 annually includes Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2017 State of the Industry (Commentary report just released!), 2016 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, Geographic Weather Impact Analysis tracking, 2017 Top 25 US Golf Markets Scorecard (just updated!)
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 Order Cognilogic.
You can order any of the above information services via Pellucid’s Online Store.
Contact: Jim Koppenhaver, President, Pellucid Corp.
July Golf Weather
