The Pellucid Perspective - July 2018 - 8

INDUSTRY
SCORECARD

results is also available to Pellucid Publications members and
Geographic Weather Impact report subscribers.
Jim Koppenhaver comments, "In June weather basically
played to a draw and our up/down/sideways arrow map of the
45 regions didn't change materially with the exception that
most of the YtD unfavorability figures improved in magnitude.
We're seeing the continuance of the pattern at the regional level
with east-of-the-Rockies regions showing GPH deficits while
the Desert SW is seeing basically flat weather performance and
the Pacific NW and California having slightly better weather
years vs. '17. Looking at May YtD results for Utilization at
the 61 markets level, as mentioned earlier, the silver lining to

Rounds by Facility Type May 2018
All Fac.
Types

Public
Access

Private

this cloud remains that Played Rounds aren't fully reflecting
the magnitude of unfavorable weather across the majority of
markets. This is illustrated in the favorable breadth of Utilization gainers which improved meaningfully to 10:1 (38 markets
showing Utilization gains against 4 markets showing declines).
Among Pellucid's Top 25 US Golf Markets for the YtD period,
18 are now showing Utilization gains with Detroit and Cleveland posting double-digit point gains in Utilization. Again, if
you want to know the Top 25 Golf Markets which posted Utilization gains and how much, just go to our website and get on
the Monthly Weather Impact subscription or sign up for Cognilogic (facility-level access via the web)." Click here.
n

n Curr Month
n Curr YtD

8.0% ___________________________________________
5.8%
6.0% ___________________________________________
5.3%
3.6%
4.0% ___________________________________________
2.0% ___________________________________________
0.0% ___________________________________________
-2.0% ___________________________________________
-4.0% ___________________________________________
-4.1%
-4.0%
-4.4%
-6.0% ___________________________________________

Looking at demand for May, rounds were up 5% vs. Year Ago
(YA), not surprising given our previous report of Golf Playable
Hours being up a similar amount for the month. May's increase
was primarily driven by the Public sector but Private also contributed to the gain. For the Year-to-Date (YtD) period, the May
gains improved the All Facility rounds performance to -4% (from
-9% in April), relatively balanced between the Public and Private
sectors. The rounds improvements were driven by superior programming and operational excellence, right? Let's take a look at
weather-adjusted Utilization and see.

For reference, Utilization and Point Change vs. Year Ago (YA)
tracks rounds demand after factoring for weather. The comparative benchmark is the Year End (YE) '17 value of 51%. For
those not familiar with Pellucid's Weather Impact tracking, the
underlying concept is relatively simple. In a theoretical world
where rounds follow weather, a 5% increase in Available Rounds
would produce a 5% gain in Played Rounds. By comparing
Played Rounds to Available Rounds, we can determine the Utilization of the average facility and how it's changing during the
year vs. the benchmark.
Answering the above question about superior programming
and operational excellence in May, the answer is....no. The first
set of bars above show that May posted a Utilization Rate (UR)
of ~52% which was flat against the YE '17 value (we simply
rode the weather tailwind). The second set of bars show the
Year-to-Date (YtD) results which registered 57% or +5 points,
down slightly from April's 62% UR. This breaks the previous
trend of four consecutive months of UR gains which were primarily driven by smaller rounds declines than GPH declines.
This is why we developed Weather Impact tracking; it tells us
and quantifies what was operational success vs. just response to
weather variance.

Utilization & Point Change May 2018

Source: GDT/NGCOA/NGF alliance

8 The Pellucid PersPecTive

n %Utilization

n Pt. Chng vs. FY '17

Curr. Month

YtD

60.0% ______________________________________56.6%

51.9%

5.0

6.0

50.0% ______________________________________-

5.0

40.0% ______________________________________-

4.0

30.0% ______________________________________-

3.0

20.0% ______________________________________-

2.0

10.0% ______________________________________-

1.0

0.3

0.0% ______________________________________-

0.0

Source: GDT/NGCOA/NGF alliance; Pellucid

July 2018

https://www.pellucidcorp.com/reports

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - July 2018