The great aviation recovery is underway, or more precisely - airline capacity is rebuilding in many parts of the world, airline schedules are more stable than they have been all year, and if you are double vaccinated (and able to work out the paper trail of requirements) you can travel freely to most parts of the world. However, you are still unable to travel everywhere and, in a throwback to the mid-nineteenth century, there are markets that remain firmly shut for nearly all international travel and that is not good news for the airline industry.
As we approach the end of the year, we’ll be covering trends from 22 key markets. We’ll recap what each industry has experienced over the past year and what to watch for in 2022. Learn who are the top advertisers from each category and how they spend across formats. The video game industry had an exciting, yet strange, year. Many great games came out. Sales were up 12% year-over-year. But major companies believe supply chain issues will begin to hamper sales. Nintendo has urged shoppers to begin holiday shopping early.
The ForwardKeys team of travel experts have been closely monitoring the winds of change in the travel sector since the pandemic unleased, and up until recently, the air ticketing data was showing the Americas, especially the Caribbean, as the sole game changers when it comes to real-time travel recovery. However, Africa and the Middle East are also proving to be much more resilient. While the total global inbound figure for international arrivals as of October 2021 sits at -77%, for Africa and the Middle East this figure is at – 68%.
More money is being spent on real estate than ever before. Through the second quarter of 2021, the total value of residential real estate transactions was over $600 billion for the third time in the past year, for a total of $750 billion. It has been steadily on the rise since 2010, but has recently taken a particularly sharp upswing. Recent totals exceed the previous peak of $568 billion in Q3 2005.The value of transactions has skyrocketed, despite sales count, continuing a relatively normal growth trend.
After the holidays? Beginning of the new year? Or once things settle down? What is the best time of the year to look for a new job? Well, by analyzing the start dates on profiles, we see that it depends a lot on the industry. The following calendar shows the frequencies of newly filled positions for each industry by month:
It’s been a long two years. Last year at this time, many of us were hoping for a quick pandemic-rebound in 2021. Couldn’t we just magically put the pandemic behind us and forge a new way forward? We know that didn’t happen. With the Delta variant and a complicated economic recovery, 2021 was marked by continued reliance on digital shopping, work, schooling and entertainment. At the same time, we experienced the “Great Resignation” and major supply chain issues.
I don't know about you, but cutting the cord was quite a daunting task that I chose to take on earlier this year (apparently I am very late to the party). How would I possibly survive without being able to watch the Patriots every Sunday, and the Bachelor every Monday? Thanks to a strong internet connection and Live TV streaming apps, I never had to find out. Live TV streaming apps have grown in popularity as they allow fans to stream their favorite shows and sports live, without needing to pay for an additional cable service.
In 2020, several big-box chains announced that they would close their retail locations on Thanksgiving Day due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. One year later, some of those same companies—including Walmart, Target, and Best Buy—will remain closed again on Thanksgiving. Consumer transaction data reveals that among the three companies, Walmart saw the most significant decrease in year-over-year sales the week of Thanksgiving in 2020. At the same time, Best Buy saw a major shift to online sales during that week while most sales at Walmart and Target still took place through retail channels.
After slipping out of its standard top spot last year during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York returned to the #1 spot on the list of top job gain markets in October, pushing Los Angeles back to the #2 spot. New York gained 247,300 jobs for the year-ending October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This was about 25,000 more than September’s annual total. Los Angeles added 227,500 jobs for the same period but recorded more than 27,000 fewer jobs gained for the year than the month before.
Foot traffic has been relatively up and stable since the decline of our initial Delta case wave and the conclusion of the back-to-school season. From October onward, things are pretty flat. Grocery is the category we want to discuss today -- that yellow line in the middle of the pack. It nicely encapsulates the complex mix of behaviors in the market right now, as some people return to their old behaviors, others stick with their new ones, and the remainder find a happy middleground.This dynamic -- the presence of old normals, new normals, and hybrid normals _all at once_ -- is showing up in every category we track. Understanding and serving this dynamic is key to winning this holiday season and beyond.
If last week was busy with IATA Slot, the Dubai Air Show and new aircraft orders, then this week is as flat as a pancake! Either nothing is happening, or everyone is taking a deserved break after the frantic activity of last week. In truth, it may just be this time of the year - pre-Thanksgiving, Winter ski season yet to start, and everyone saving their holidays for Xmas… we need the corporate traveller to return, any sightings anywhere?
STR’s latest 51-chart map shows a variety of recent national/regional trends as well as the general pace of the industry’s continued recovery. For the four weeks ending with 13 November 2021, more states closed the gap or exceeded their 2019 levels in revenue per available room (RevPAR) on a total-room-inventory (TRI) basis. Keystone markets, however, remain persistent holdouts toward further national recovery. Higher-than-expected average daily rate (ADR) along with strong weekend demand continue to underpin recovery.
The U.S. hotel industry saw its largest week-over-week demand gain since early October with 704,000 more room nights sold for the week ending 13 November 2021. Weekly demand has increased in 21 of the past 33 weeks and the most recent week’s gain was the 10th largest in that span. With the increase, occupancy advanced to 61.6%, up 1.9 percentage points from the previous week. Compared with 2019, occupancy indexed at 96, which was the highest level since early July. Average daily rate (ADR) also improved, up 1.3% week on week, to a level that was three percent higher than what it was in 2019.
Our latest white paper checks in with one of the pandemics major winners – the grocery sector. Following our Summer Grocery update, we dove into nationwide, regional, and brand-level visit data to understand what has changed and what has returned to pre-pandemic patterns. Year-over-two-year (Yo2Y) grocery visits have been consistently up nationwide in recent months, with weekly visits in October surpassing 2019 numbers by 5.2%, 7.1%, 7.2%, and 9.3% for the weeks of October 4th, 11th, 18th, and 25th, respectively.
Last week, we dug into the rising flu levels in the South, particularly in Florida. While those trends continue into this week, Kinsa’s data also shows G.I. symptoms like nausea, diarrhea and vomiting are increasing in southern states. Illnesses that cause G.I. distress have been relatively low since the pandemic began — likely as a result of social distancing and masking. As people begin gathering for the holidays, we expect to see an uptick in illness, potentially including those that cause G.I. distress.
Notable Hit 1: (ROST:NASDAQ) On Thursday November 19 , 2021 Ross Stores, Inc. (ROST) posted better-than-expected revenues of $4.57bn beating the consensus estimate of $4.31bn or by 6% and in the same direction as Advan's forecasted sales. The revenue was up 22% YoY - Advan's foot traffic data captured an increase in foot traffic of +32% YoY at its stores for Q3 2021. Advan's footfall data has a correlation of 0.92 on a YoY basis with ROST's top-line revenue over the last 12 quarters.
Online grocery has become one of the most dynamic spaces in e-commerce, with third-party providers and grocers themselves experimenting with new models. But how do third-party services compare to sales directly from the grocer websites? In today’s Insight Flash, we take advantage of CE Receipt’s unique ability to capture the online sales of grocers such as Kroger to compare online growth trajectories, average items per basket, and average price per item.
The usual leaders of the student housing space – properties within a half mile to campus – experienced drastic performance changes throughout the last 18 months. As the student housing sector moves beyond pandemic-induced performance shifts, will these pedestrian assets regain star status? The pandemic caused some bumpiness in the Fall 2020 student housing leasing season but Fall 2021 reported a return to stability toward the end of the pre-lease season. After hitting cycle-lows in occupancy and rent change, student housing enjoyed one of its best-ever years as demand returned in a big way.
Holiday retail is up 9% YoY so far according to the Earnest Research Spend Index (ERSI*), a measure of sales growth for 2,500+ U.S. consumer discretionary and staples businesses. Preliminary data reflects sales during the early holiday retail season starting Nov. 1 as defined by the National Retail Federation, to Nov. 10. Growth decelerated from October and remains slightly below the 2020’s holiday retail season levels. ERSI consumer spending growth peaked in early 2021 on a YoY basis as the data lapped Covid-19 related closures.
Renters living in professionally managed market-rate apartments are more affluent than many might realize. Nationally, households who have moved in year-to-date during 2021 make an average of roughly $67,000 annually, and that typical income figure reaches about $90,000 for those opting for the luxury Class A stock. After standard incomes among move-in households backtracked a bit in 2020, significant increases returned in 2021. Comparing back to pre-pandemic “normal” times, today’s new residents earn 8.4% more than the new move-in renters did in calendar 2019.
