The June 2022 Event Index reveals 12 cities spanning the USA from Seattle, Washington to Baltimore, Maryland as set to experience very high volumes of large events in June. These event clusters will drive people movement and billions of dollars in demand as hundreds of thousands of people gather in overlapping impactful events, causing demand surges and crowds that businesses and community leaders can prepare for.
PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company, today released its June 2022 PredictHQ Event Index report. Companies such as Uber, Accor Hotels and Domino’s Pizza use PredictHQ’s intelligent event data to forecast demand more accurately. The Event Index is a simple entry point for companies to begin to proactively prepare for the multi-billion impact of events on demand each month.
The PredictHQ Event Index is a unique model for each of 40+ major US cities that identifies how substantial an impact events will have as a simple to understand score out of 20. This score is calculated for each city’s baseline event activity based on five years of historical, verified event data and millions of events per location. This gives companies operating in those areas a simple summary to help them plan for any anticipated demand surges or drops.
An index score of 10 represents an average score for that city, a score above a 15 means the city is likely to be significantly busier than usual, and a score below an 8 means that city will likely be noticeably quieter than usual. Every city has its own baseline and scale to accommodate for the variation in their populations. For example, a score of an 18 in New York City will entail millions of people moving about the city, whereas a score of 18 in Wichita, Kansas will involve just over 100,000 people.
In June, the cities with the highest activity are:
- Seattle
- Philadelphia
- Chicago – particularly notable for a 16+ score every week in May
- Pittsburgh
- Colorado Springs
- San Francisco
Plus another 11 are detailed in the report as set to experience unusually high or low event activity in June.
“Major events continue to roar back, and the range and scale of large events week-by-week in the USA means most companies fail to accurately factor these into their demand planning or forecasting,” said Campbell Brown, CEO of PredictHQ. “One cluster of events could drive six figures in sales in a single weekend for a restaurant in that city, but only if that business is ready for the surge. Knowing small businesses and city leaders often don’t have resources for sophisticated demand forecasting, we built the Event Index to provide a simple metric for tracking upcoming demand surges and drops so they can plan with confidence.”
PredictHQ tracks global events across 19 categories, accounting for attendance-based events like concerts, non-attendance-based events like school holidays and unscheduled events such as severe weather incidents. This breadth of event coverage is critical for the Event Index, as the peak weeks are caused by many overlapping large events.
For example, Philadelphia experienced unusually low event activity in the final week of May scoring 8.1, but then becomes the USA’s busiest city in terms of unusually high event activity in the week of June 12 with a score of 17.8. This surge is caused by a combination of more than 80 events with 2,500+ attendees, including three festivals, a major expo, the New Balance Nationals and a couple of concerts that will attract 50,000+ attendees each.
“Many companies rely on rolling weekly or monthly averages to forecast demand, so without factoring in the dynamic nature of events, many will be understaffed, out of stock and stressed,” Brown says. “While these events in Philadelphia will cause major demand surges for businesses nearby, companies and communities also need to factor in how the school holidays per district will impact demand patterns, which will impact more than 255,000 students and their families.”
While the Event Index provides an accurate look ahead at people movement, it is designed to be a simple and accessible summary of the demand intelligence PredictHQ offers – particularly for large companies operating worldwide. Industry leaders in on-demand, accommodation, QSR and transport use PredictHQ’s verified and enriched event data to inform staffing decisions, pricing and inventory strategies, and many other core business functions.
