hospitality

For these CFOs, summer is where the year is won or lost.

This article appears in the July/August issue of Global Finance Magazine.

Every spring, airlines, cruise lines, travel booking platforms, golf tour operators, race promoters and other seasonal businesses begin trying to answer the question that will define much of their year: How is summer shaping up? For their CFOs, a few months of peak demand often determine whether the entire year meets expectations.

This year, the early signals have been broadly encouraging. Despite conflict in the Middle East that rattled European and Asian bookings, travel advisories in Mexico, and lingering concerns about consumer sentiment, many travel companies reported strong demand. Europe’s TUI Group reported its best-ever first half, with 7.9 million summer bookings already in place, while Expedia posted its highest first-quarter EBITDA margin in 15 years.

But the stakes remain unusually high because many of these businesses generate a disproportionate share of their annual revenue in a relatively short window. Whether they operate airlines, racetracks, or golf tours, their finance chiefs spend months forecasting demand, managing labor and capital, and preparing for risks—from weather disruptions to geopolitical shocks—that could derail the season.

The Aviation CFO: Gauging Bad Weather

Today, by contrast, consumers want to travel, and the booking window is holding steady. That signal is especially important to the CFOs at companies whose fortunes depend on summer travel. 

Max Mertz is CFO and co-owner of Alaska Seaplanes, which operates a fleet of 20 aircraft based in Juneau and serves communities throughout southeast Alaska. Summer brings millions of visitors to the state, many seeking flights over glaciers, bear safaris, and trips to remote fishing lodges. 

“June, July, August, and then, if you add the shoulder season, which starts around mid-May and lasts until about a week after Labor Day, account for two-thirds of our revenue. It’s critical, honestly,” Mertz says.

Bookings at his company’s tourism subsidiary arrive months in advance, enabling year-over-year comparisons. Fishing lodges commit capacity based on their own guest projections. Strong retail sales and corporate bonus cycles in the Lower 48 states translate into lodge demand. Construction projects and gold and silver mines in remote communities create predictable demand for cargo and charters.

The seasonal concentration is all about costs. 

“Aviation is a high fixed-cost industry,” Mertz says. “On a per-flight, per-unit basis, obviously the higher your volume, the more you cover fixed costs, so you’re making a good chunk of your bottom line as well.”

What makes Alaska Seaplanes unusual — even among seasonal businesses — is the extent to which weather inserts an uncontrollable financial variable. Anyone who has flown in Alaska knows how its dense cloud layer and mist can quickly form, grounding aircraft for days. Mertz has invested in reliability. Alaska Seaplanes has spent multiple seven-figure sums on specialized navigation systems that increase aircraft safety and reliability.

No Do-Overs: Running Racetracks

Weather also matters to Mike Morrisey. As CFO of Green Savoree Racing Promotions for the past 31 seasons, he oversees four motorsports race properties: Mid-Ohio; a newly built circuit in Markham, Ontario; St. Petersburg, Florida; and Portland, Oregon. “The summer is where you make your revenue,” he says.

Often, a big race weekend is a single 72-hour window when gate revenue, hospitality, suites, sponsorships, and concessions converge. There is no making it up later. 

“When the checkered flag drops, we have crews out there tearing it all down” at the temporary street racing circuits, Morrisey says. 

The leading indicators he watches for signs of summer success are ticket renewals and suite sales. The next forecasting cycle begins almost immediately after the prior season ends. 

“We typically launch ticket renewals in the fall for the following year,” Morrisey says. “St. Pete tickets go on sale in mid-September, and Mid-Ohio in mid- to late October.” Suite customers are approached for renewal while the race is still being torn down. 

The logistics of motorsports racing would likely surprise CFOs in other industries. Green Savoree owns roughly $4 million in portable grandstands and suite infrastructure. These aluminum structures sit in a St. Petersburg warehouse between events, are loaded onto about 40 trucks after the Florida race, and are shipped to Canada for use in Markham. The company operates with fewer than 50 full-time employees year-round, a number that swells to about 270 during the peak summer season. 

Golf’s Stark Scheduling Problem

Gordon Dalgleish co-founded Perry Golf in 1984 and remains president of the luxury golf travel company he and his brother built around the British Isles. The company is now majority-owned by private equity investors. His seasonal challenge is stark: He sells access to some of the world’s most coveted golf inventory in a region that is closed for business for roughly half the year.

“It is very seasonal, and it doesn’t matter what you do,” says Dalgleish. “You cannot sell golf trips for November. It gets dark and rainy.”

The business operates at near-full capacity during the peak season and near-zero outside it; the peak season runs from late April to early October. St. Andrews, which Dalgleish calls the engine that “drives the bus” for the entire Scottish golf hospitality industry, closes for three weeks in September and early October for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club’s autumn meeting and the Dunhill Links Championship. When St. Andrews closes, the broader market goes quiet. 

Booking lead time has changed dramatically, reshaping Perry Golf’s forecasting model. 

Pre-Covid, Dalgleish saw a fairly predictable 12-month booking cycle. Inquiries would begin in July for the following summer, slow through the holidays, and ramp back up in January and February, giving him a clear picture of the season by late February. Today, he sees inquiries for July 2028 arriving in spring 2026. By this Christmas, he expects to have 40% to 50% of next summer’s bookings in hand. 

One possible driver of this shift is affluent Americans, a key customer segment, who have reoriented their spending toward experiences rather than assets and who plan farther in advance to secure exactly what they want. However, the supply of premium Scottish golf inventory has barely grown. 

“There are 25 courses that are on everyone’s must-play list in Scotland,” Dalgleish notes. Demand is running ahead of last year’s pace, and father-son trips are booking at high volumes. “There’s an affluence slushing around in golf just now.”

The Franchise Model Meets the Heat Wave

Josh Greear models a different kind of seasonal pressure. As CFO of Maryland-based Authority Brands, which derives over 90% of its revenue and more than $2 billion in annual system sales from 15 home services franchise brands, he manages seasonal concentration across a portfolio of businesses, each facing different summer inflection points.

“Summer’s always been important to Authority Brands,” Greear says. Its America’s Swimming Pools franchise business faces heavy warm-weather demand. Consumers tend to seek the services of its Mosquito Squad brand as critters emerge in warm weather. One Hour Heating & Air is driven by heat waves, not the calendar. Figuring out when to hire is tricky.

“The hardest time to manage labor is on the shoulder of the seasons, when you’re seeing the largest change,” Greear observes. In a business like One Hour Heating and Air, if temperatures spike sharply and you’re not prepared, you miss the demand and usually have no easy way to make it up. Conversely, if you’ve overstaffed in anticipation of early summer, profitability erodes.

To better manage risk, Greear says Authority Brands has invested in large-language-model-driven forecasting that integrates local weather trends, historical demand patterns, and brand-specific variables at the ZIP code level. The business now uses multivariate models that ingest large datasets and distill them into actionable insights for specific locations. For summer 2026, Greear flagged a milder-than-typical start to the season in many parts of the US, which will affect the timing of demand for weather-sensitive brands.

Greear measures success by revenue, share gains, and franchisee health: “If we’re taking share, our customers are happy, and, most importantly, our franchise owners are healthy, then our business is in a very stable, long-term strong position.”

Another way to manage seasonal risk, however, is to diversify: in this case, by owning businesses that operate year-round, collectively if not individually.

California-based Youth Enrichment Brands traces its roots to summer camp and has spread that model across 12 months; its portfolio now includes US Sports Camps, i9 Sports, and School of Rock, which together smooth the seasonal curve. 

“As of 2025, less than 20% of our systemwide sales are derived from summer-based activities alone,” says Dustin Bertram, CFO. Winter programs, year-round leagues, and music instruction have broadened the revenue base. “The platforms that win will be those that remain focused on the customer experience, maintain diversified offerings, exercise disciplined cost control, and invest in evolving their programs.”

Weld Royal is a contributing writer based in the U.S.