. |
Making gains: HIL indicator shows positive trend:
EDITOR'S NOTE
| September 25th, 2009 |
| e-forecasting.com eNews for the Hotel Industry |
DURHAM, New Hampshire —
Economic research firm e-forecasting.com, in conjunction with Smith
Travel Research, announced this morning that their U.S. Hotel
Industry Leading indicator, HIL, went up in August for the fourth
consecutive month. HIL rose 1.7 percent in August, after rising 2
percent in July. 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. This means that when the HIL increases for four to five
consecutive months, the hotel industry should begin to show signs
of improvement. The latest increase brought the index to a reading
of 105.6. The index was set to equal 100 in 2000.
Looking at its six-month growth rate, a signal of turning points,
the HIL indicator went up by an annual rate of 4.9 percent in
August, after an increase of 0.7 percent in July. This compares to
a long-term annual growth rate of 3.6 percent, the same as the
annual growth rate of the industry’s overall economic activity. At
the deepest depths of the recession, this growth rate was down to
negative 15.7 percent, which happened in January of this year.
Six of the nine components that make up the Hotel Industry's
Leading indicator had a positive contribution in August: weekly
hours in hotels; hotel profitability; international visitors’
future demand; interest rate spread; new orders for manufactured
goods and national vacation barometer. The remaining three
components had a negative or zero contribution to HIL in August:
labor market tightness; oil prices and housing activity.
.gif) |
"The leading indicator continues
to improve, with the August reading continuing the trend,”
said Maria Simos, CEO of e-forecasting.com. “This is the
first time in nearly three and a half years that the
six-month growth rate of the indicator has been above the
long-term trend of 3.6 percent. This is positive news for
the industry that expansion lies ahead.”
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 the Hotel Industry Pulse, 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. What the indicator does is
provide useful information about the timing of future shifts
in the direction of the U.S. hotel industry.
|
