Following a poor January opening to the year, the 12-month season golf geographies took another hit as the February Golf Playable Hours (GPH) were down 27 percent for the Total U.S. vs. January 2009. That produced a further decline in the Year-to-Date (YtD) GPH figure to -23 percent through February, the worst weather start for the industry since Pellucid began tracking it in 2006.
"Wow, this one took my breath away,” says Pellucid President Jim Koppenhaver. “While compiling the weather numbers for February, I was halfway through the geographies before I found one that actually had an increase. Lest everyone lose hope, we're still forecasting a total year at the national level within 2 percent of 2009 so hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate with our catch-up plan. The challenge for the counter-seasonal markets however is that this is their time to make hay and there's not much harvesting available so I anticipate that areas like Phoenix, Orlando, and the Southeast Coast will have a much harder time recovering from this start than other areas like Texas and California.”
Looking at the YtD weather impact breadth ratio results (measured as the number of regions up compared to the number of regions down), February continued the trend of negative breadth at a ratio of 1:2.0. This is comprised of six regions up vs. 12 down and one in the neutral zone of the 19 regions which have 12-month seasons. The Pacific Northwest Coast, the Calif. Valley and Hawaii were "weather favorable" through February. Florida, Texas and the Southeast Coast are all "weather unfavorable" for the YtD period.
Looking back at the previously-reported January weather results vs. the Golf Datatech/NGF rounds played report, the Utilization Rate (UR) was stable despite the poor weather. The month UR was 53 percent or virtually flat vs. the 2009 year-end benchmark (comprised of a 19 percent decline in rounds demand against an 18 percent GPH decline for the month). Pellucid's Market-Level Weather Impact tracking identifies the biggest gainers and losers in UR for 61 markets/states/state groups. Among the 12-month season geographies, the market-level breadth for the January YtD period finished at 5 markets/states up compared to 29 down and none in the neutral zone producing a tough negative market-level breadth ratio of 1:6. Leading the “utilization winners” were Orlando and Dallas while most California markets ended up on the "utilization losers" list.
“Looking back at the Utilization levels for January, once again we pretty much just held our own in the face of unfavorable weather,” Koppenhaver says. “What that suggests to me is, as an industry, the best we can do in poor weather is hold our own and in favorable conditions we're not able to fully capitalize on the upside (kind of sounds like my golf game). I would suggest that part of this is related to our relatively poor marketing skills as an industry. To shift play around bad weather (i.e. make up for lost rounds), you have to be able to communicate with your customers with relevant messages that change their behavior when the weather turns nice. The numbers suggest that, on many levels, we still have a way to go on the marketing front."
The PGA of America PerformanceTrak numbers for January aren't yet available so we'll have to wait and see what the revenue and RevpAR implications are for the opening month of the season under these conditions.
