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HIL takes a step back in January:
EDITOR'S NOTE
| March 3rd, 2010 |
| e-forecasting.com eNews for the Hotel Industry |
DURHAM, New Hampshire —
Economic research firm e-forecasting.com, in conjunction with Smith
Travel Research, announced the U.S. Hotel Industry Leading
Indicator—HIL—edged down 0.2 percent in January, the first monthly
decrease after nine consecutive months of increases for the
indicator. HIL went up 1.4 percent in December.
 HIL,
a monthly leading indicator for the U.S. hotel industry, is
a composite leading indicator that, on average, leads the
industry’s business activity four to five months in advance.
The latest increase brought the index to a reading of 109.7.
The index is set to equal 100 in 2000.
HIL’s
six-month growth rate, a signal of turning points, went up
by an annual rate of 10.6 percent in January, after going up
12 percent in December. This compares to a long-term annual
growth rate of 3.5 percent, the same as the annual growth
rate of the state's overall economic activity. To put this
in perspective, the growth rate was down to negative 15.7
percent during the deepest part of this last recession last
January.
Three
of the nine components that make up HIL had a positive
contribution in January: International Visitors Future
Demand; Interest Rate Spread and New Orders for Manufactured
Goods. Six of the nine components had a negative or zero
contribution to Hotel Industry's Leading Indicator in
January: Labor Market Tightness; Weekly Hours in Hotels;
Hotel Profitability; Oil Prices; Housing Activity and
National Vacation Barometer.
“This
month we see the Hotel Industry Leading Indicator pull back
a bit,” commented Maria Simos, CEO of e-forecasting.com.
“There were just too many components that brought the
indicator down this month, particularly hotel profitability,
which measures aspects of future hotel revenue and costs.
Also this month, we see the six-month growth rate step back
from its previous high of 12 percent that it reached in
December.”
The U.S. Hotel Industry Leading Indicator, or
HIL for short, is a monthly leading indicator for the
industry. Building off the tracking success of HIP, the
real-time indicator for the U.S. hotel industry, HIL was
built as a composite indicator that uses nine different
components that, on average, when put together have led the
industry four to five months in advance of a change in
direction in the industry business cycle. HIL provides
useful information about the future direction of the U.S.
hotel industry.
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