-Press Release, Buffalo Grove, Ill.
June weather registered slightly below 2012 but is statistically flat as Golf Playable Hours (GPH) came in at -1% vs. Year Ago (YA) at the national level. For the Year-to-Period (YtD), the GPH comparative measure continued to improve but still rests at -13%. The YtD regional breadth ratio is negative at 1:4 with 8 regions having favorable weather against 30 regions with unfavorable weather (7 regions are in the neutral zone of +/- 2%). Looking at YtD weather impact performance by day-of-week, the unfavorable weather tilted decidedly to weekdays vs. weekends (which helps soften the blow slightly). For the full-year forecast, our June update deteriorated slightly and continues to show that we’ll give back all of 2012’s favorability and then some by year end. The values for the above two metrics, the GPH results by individual day-of-the-week, the monthly timeseries for the entire year as well as market-level Utilization Rates are available to Pellucid Publications Members via the Client Login section at the Pellucid website (go to www.pellucidcorp.com for information or to subscribe).
Looking back on May rounds played, as reported by Golf Datatech, to calculate the facility % Utilization Rate (UR), rounds demand (-6%) was slightly greater than the weather decline (-3%) resulting in a UR level for the month of 50% which is 1 point below the benchmark 2012 year-end value of 51%. For the YtD period the measure is favorable with a lower rounds decline rate (-12%) vs. the weather decline rate (-17%) producing a UR of 55% or up 3 points vs. 2012 year-end.Jim Koppenhaver comments, “While I knew that 2013 was going to be tough on the weather front when comparing to 2012, I didn’t think that come June we’d be cheering for basically a non-negative result on the GPH measure but that’s what we’ve got. It’s also normal that weather variation magnitude is muted during the summer months as temperature becomes less of a factor (although Heat Index does come into play for a number of geographies) and it becomes more of a precipitation and severe storm game. The Northwest continues to enjoy the only meaningful gains in GPH joined by North Florida. California is benefitting from relatively stable year-to-year weather (they didn’t get the huge upside last year though so that’s one factor helping their flat comparisons) and Phoenix (unlike their strong housing rebound but off a significantly depressed base) is also stable on GPH compared to 2012. The other slightly discouraging fact is that the full year forecast dropped slightly which means that it’s coming in line with our YtD results wiping out some of the rebound that we had forecast (hoped for).”
On the revenue side via the May YtD PGA PerformanceTrak numbers, they’re reporting a 3% decline in Median Total Revenue and -9% for the Median Golf Fee Revenue component (both better than the 12% rounds decline). Comparing their YtD GF Revenue and Rounds Played metrics produces a +3% change on GF rate-per-played-round. Pellucid calculations combining our GPH measure and their GF Revenue measure produces the Revenue per Available Round (RevpAR, or the revenue efficiency of our “factories”) metric which improved by 7%.
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 will be registered for the next edition on 7/15/13.
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 can subscribe to the Pellucid Publications Membership (Outside the Ropes monthly newsletter, 2012 State of the Industry, 2012 Industry Golf Consumer Franchise Scorecard, Monthly Market-Level Weather Impact, 2012 Top 25 US Golf Markets reports) 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 (edgehillgolf@msn.com). You can now order either of the above information services via Pellucid’s online store at http://www.pellucidcorp.com/purchase-reports/online-store
