The last weeks of December along with the first weeks of a fresh year are typically slower for hotels. Throw in lingering concerns around the pandemic and many areas of the country have seen low performance as the calendar flipped from 2021 to 2022. Not all markets are deep in deficit territory, however, as a diverse range of STR-defined markets are achieving relatively strong indicators. Our new “bubble charts” for 2022 highlight the leaders and laggards for the four weeks ending 15 January.
In early January 2022, Mattress Firm filed for an IPO. The mattress company was taken private in late summer 2016 after about five years of trading on the NASDAQ. Consumer spending data shows that Mattress Firm’s sales have grown over the past two years, as average transaction values at the retailer have increased compared to before the pandemic. Mattress Firm has experienced increasing sales since early in the pandemic. Between Q2 and Q3 of 2020, sales grew 49 percent and have remained elevated through the end of 2021. Notably, Mattress Firm temporarily closed about 50 percent of its stores in March 2020, with most reopening by late May 2020.
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how toxic work culture is driving the big resignation, in our joint article with Culture X that appeared in the MIT Sloan Review. Today, we want to know which aspects of work contribute the most to employee satisfaction and what companies that do well have in common. Using employee review scores, we look at which topic ratings impact overall company ratings the most. Below shows the effect other topics have on overall satisfaction, holding constant time and company, only identifying from the variation of scores within a company.
Few companies in retail have been under a more intense spotlight of late than Kohl’s. From potential takeovers to splitting its online and offline businesses, the attention on the department leader has only increased in recent weeks. So where does the company’s physical retail performance stand and how is it trending? Kohl’s had seen a steady and significant recovery throughout the first half of 2021 with the year-over-two-year (Yo2Y) visit gap declining from 18.8% in February to just 5.7% in July.
Over the course of the day yesterday, WeatherOptics’s highly sensitive forecasting systems began to show increasing probability of a Northeast blizzard this weekend. With this early warning, today’s Insight Flash demonstrates how to use CE’s unique set of weather impact tools to assess which companies will see the biggest impact to their sales in the Boston area and nationwide. Looking at the brands whose sales are most heavily indexed to the Boston area, which is extremely likely to be one of the hardest hit this weekend, discretionary retailer Marshalls stands out as having the largest impact, with a -60% sales decline due to weather over the two-day weekend.
We've just released our new and data-packed report, Benchmarking the Global Mobile Retailing Landscape. The report looks at the global and regional shopping app leaders across Q4 2021 and the full calendar year. We then dive into the specific U.S. markets of Brick n' Mortar retailers, Fast Fashion, Direct to Consumer, C2C Marketplaces and Luxury retailers.
The fast growing China cosmetics market has been increasingly gaining investors’ attention. The emergence and rise of domestic players widened choices for consumers and exerted fierce competition into the market, encouraging brands to adapt quickly and seek more effective strategies. Meanwhile, constant change in consumer appetite within yet another year under the pandemic have led the landscape to evolve.
Every week for the last two years we have been providing a weekly update on the impact of Covid-19 on scheduled airline capacity around the world. Throughout that time, providing the air travel ecosystem with essential data has had many ups and downs, twists and turns. This week is no exception as airlines remain spooked by the latest wave of Covid-19 and have once again been cutting capacity with another 18 million seats removed from sale through to the end of March, resulting in over 51 million seats being 'lost' from the first quarter of this year.
The value of commercial and multifamily construction starts in the top 20 metropolitan areas of the U.S. increased 18% from 2020 to 2021, according to Dodge Construction Network. Nationally, commercial and multifamily construction starts increased 16% in 2021. In the leading half (the top 10 metro areas), commercial and multifamily starts rose 18% in 2021, with two metro areas, Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, CA, posting a decline. In the lesser half of metro areas (those ranked 11 through 20), commercial and multifamily starts rose 17% in 2021, with Chicago, IL, and Nashville, TN, losing ground from 2020.
Etsy, even moreso than most marketplace businesses, has built success on sourcing a unique set of one-of-a-kind items from a diverse set of creators and collectors. What is inside the Etsy basket has changed dramatically over the last two years, with its ability to quickly take advantage of a demand for custom masks filling a void in the mass production marketplace. In today’s Insight Flash, we demonstrate how our CE Receipt and CE Web data can work together to show what’s happening below the Etsy top line
Netflix's 13 mobile games have been installed more than eight million times since they launched on November 3, 2021. Not all 13 games were released simultaneously, but five did go live on day one. You can see the staggered release schedule in the image below. Last November, Netflix began bundling mobile games into its subscription at no extra cost. You can find the games in your Netflix app or through the app stores, as they are available to download and launch separately. However, a Netflix subscription is required to play the games.
Interest in mobile gaming, cryptocurrency and user-generated content reached a new high in 2021, laying the bedrock for the Play-to-Earn industry. A record 3.8 trillion hours were spent on mobile devices in 2021, with the average user spending 4.8 hours per day on mobile. Mobile gaming was in high demand — to the tune of 83 billion downloads, an increase off the back of an already record-breaking 2020. Cryptocurrency apps Coinbase, Crypto.com and Binance dominated the breakout Finance apps charts around the world
Barnes & Noble is making a comeback. Foot traffic to existing locations is booming, and the company has even opened several new stores in recent months to keep up with demand. How did Barnes & Noble do it? We dove into the location analytics to find out. Before COVID took center stage in every discussion on the future of retail, some legacy brands were already struggling to adapt to the millennial shifts in consumer behavior. One of the chains that had the most trouble finding its place in the new increasingly digital retail environment was Barnes & Noble.
Podcasting is still one of the youngest forms of media—but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great advertising investment. The number of podcasts is growing quickly, and people are taking notice. In 2006, only 22 percent of the adult population in the United States knew of podcasting, according to Statista. Last year, that number climbed to 78 percent. And it’s no surprise—listeners with any niche hobby or learning interest can find something to enjoy.
Good news: _nationally_, the wave of COVID cases fueled by the Omicron variant has peaked. But, trends vary vastly across regions. Kinsa data continues to show relief in the Northeast, which was hit hard by the Omicron surge in December. On the flip side, COVID cases remain record-high and increasing in much of the South and the West (WI, SC, UT, and AK in particular), where the Omicron wave hit later on. With parts of the country peaking, newly reported COVID-19 cases in the US started to decrease over the past week, but deaths will lag and unfortunately continue to increase.
The Case-Shiller methodology is the established standard for measuring home price growth. This is for good reason. Contrast it with the second most common method: the median. The median comes with the substantial flaw that it can change because different types of homes are selling, and not because they are appreciating. The Case-Shiller methodology avoids this by comparing a homes’ sale price in one sale compared to its previous sale.
Notable Hit 1: (UAL:NASDAQ) On Thursday January 21, 2022 United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (UAL) posted better-than-expected revenues of $8.192bn surpassing the consensus estimate of $7.93bn or by +3.3% and in the same direction as Advan's forecasted sales. The revenue was up 140% YoY - Advan's foot traffic data captured an increase in foot traffic of +79% YoY at United's passenger terminals for Q4 2021. Advan's footfall data has a correlation of 0.94 on a YoY basis with UAL's top-line revenue over the last 12 quarters.
Throughout the Leisure & Recreation Industry, entertainment businesses in both the US and UK have been seeing a strong start to 2022. Whether it’s hours-long lines for a popcorn bucket at a theme park or a Spidey-driven boost to the box office, growth seems extremely positive versus last year. But how quickly we forget – how does this growth stack up when compared to two years ago?
Food delivery app growth and engagement declined and stagnated in 2021. A worrying trend line for the market that ended 2020 with multiple billion-dollar acquisitions and DoorDash’s $60.2B public market debut. The top six players in U.S. food delivery are DoorDash and Caviar, GrubHub and Seamless, Uber Eats and Postmates. 2020 was a banner year with Apptopia data showing a 12% lift in total sessions, comparing January with December. During that time, GrubHub was acquired for $7.3B by European food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway, and Uber Eats bought Postmates for $2.65B.
Department stores showed signs of sales recovery during the recent holiday season. Consumer transaction data reveals that 2021 holiday sales at several major U.S. department store parent companies approached pre-pandemic levels, and a few companies such as Dillard’s (NYSE: DDS) and Hudson’s Bay Company even exceeded holiday sales before the pandemic. At the same time, U.S. consumers who shopped at department store companies spent more on average in November and December 2021 than they did during the same months in 2019.
