A Comparative Revenue Analysis of Hotel Yield Management Heuristics

Yield management is the dynamic pricing, overbooking, and allocation of perishable assets across market segments in an effort to maximize short-term revenues for the firm. Numerous optimization heuristics for allocation and overbooking exist for the airline industry, whose perishable asset is the airplane seat. When an airplane departs, no revenue is gained from the empty seat(s). In the hotel industry, the perishable asset is the hotel room-once a room is left empty for a night, that night's revenue cannot be recaptured. The literature on yield management heuristics for the hotel industry is sparse. For the hotel operating environment, no research has adequately (1) integrated overbooking with allocation, (2) modeled the phenomenon of hotel patrons extending or contracting their stay at a moment's notice, or (3) performed a realistic performance comparison of alternative heuristics. This research develops (1) two hotel-specific algorithms that both integrate overbooking with the allocation decisions, (2) a simulation model to reproduce realistic hotel operating environments, and (3) compares the performance of five heuristics under 36 realistic hotel operating environments. Seven conclusions are reached with regard to which heuristic(s) perform best in specific operating environments. Generally, heuristic selection is very much dependent on the hotel operating environment. A counterintuitive result is that in many operating environments, the simpler heuristics work as well as the more complex ones.     

酒店收益管理的研究进展与前景

对酒店收益管理的内涵进行了讨论,从六个方面介绍了酒店收益管理的应用特征,归纳 分析了酒店收益管理的常用研究方法. 基于酒店收益管理(包括需求预测、超量预订、客房分配 和定价等) 研究进展的介绍与分析,指出了酒店收益管理的研究发展方向.     

航空客运舱位控制和超售综合静态建模研究

本文研究航空运输收益管理的舱位控制和超售综合静态建模问题.通过将机票销售过程模拟成排队过程,以收益最大化为目标函数,首先给出了单航段单等级票价下的超售水平公式.然后将该思路推广到多等级票价情况,应用动态规划方法建立了舱位控制和超售综合控制静态模型,在建立了两个定理的基础上,由该模型进一步推导出了各等级舱位最优订座限制的决策方程.最后分析了一个实例以说明决策方程的应用.     

Clinic Overbooking to Improve Patient Access and Increase Provider Productivity*

The problem of patient no‐shows (patients who do not arrive for scheduled appointments) is significant in many health care settings, where no‐show rates can vary widely. No‐shows reduce provider productivity and clinic efficiency, increase health care costs, and limit the ability of a clinic to serve its client population by reducing its effective capacity. In this article, we examine the problem of no‐shows and propose appointment overbooking as one means of reducing the negative impact of no‐shows. We find that patient access and provider productivity are significantly improved with overbooking, but that overbooking causes increases in both patient wait times and provider overtime. We develop a new clinic utility function to capture the trade‐offs between these benefits and costs, and we show that the relative values that a clinic assigns to serving additional patients, minimizing patient waiting times, and minimizing clinic overtime will determine whether overbooking is warranted. From the results of a series of simulation experiments, we determine that overbooking provides greater utility when clinics serve larger numbers of patients, no‐show rates are higher, and service variability is lower. Even with highly variable service times, many clinics will achieve positive net results with overbooking. Our analysis provides valuable guidance to clinic administrators about the use of appointment overbooking to improve patient access, provider productivity, and overall clinic performance.     

Options Contracts with Overbooking in the Air Cargo Industry

In today's world economy, which is marked by intensified international trade, air cargo acts as a key facilitator. However, cargo airlines continue to struggle to be profitable because of very high asset costs and substantial demand uncertainty. To improve upon this situation, we propose an options contract. Our model captures the main features of cargo trade between an airline and a freight forwarder and allows us to derive an optimal reservation policy. We then go on to analyze the impact of overbooking on the profit of the cargo capacity provider. The model is subsequently applied to real‐life booking data provided by a major cargo carrier. This enables us to compare current contractual arrangements with the ones proven optimal in the model. A numerical study provides insights about the impact of overbooking on contract parameters and profitability. Managerial insights to be drawn conclude this study.     

淡季中酒店与OTA合作模式选择研究

针对淡季时酒店入住率下降的困境,将"互联网+"背景与收益管理理论相结合,通过构建Stackelberg博弈模型,研究了淡季时酒店与在线旅游代理商（Online Travel Agent,OTA）如何选择合作模式以提高入住率和收益。研究在几种常见情境下展开,不同情境下均得出了最优合作模式。优化的合作模式不但协调了酒店服务供应链,而且在提高酒店整体效益的同时,也增加了OTA的收益。研究为酒店和OTA提供了具有可操作意义上的合作模式决策支持,同时也弥补了以往研究在酒店和OTA合作模式对比、选择与优化方面的空缺。     

Innovation behavior in the hotel industry

We develop and test a model of innovation behavior in the hotel industry. The model relates four types of innovation—i.e., management, external communication, service scope and back-office—to the key determinants: service provider characteristics, customer competences and the market drivers. Using statistical probit models and cross-sectional survey data from a stratified sample of hotels in the Balearic Islands (N=331) we were able to verify the model including innovation types determinants and the innovation impact on hotels performance. Main findings verify the model indicating the effects of these determinants on innovation and the positive impact of the innovation on the hotels performance. Hence, innovation decisions determinants are: the additional services on offer, that bookings are made through tour operators, that hotels are part of a hotel chain and that the owners of the hotel run the business.     

航空公司与旅行社的协作机制研究

旅行社是航空公司机票销售网络中非常重要的一环。作为一种特殊的机票代理,为了应对旅游旺季的旅客需求,旅行社往往会提前较长时间从航空公司预订机票。对于航空公司来说,提前预订机票给旅行社是降低销售风险的一个重要途径。在进行机票预订交易时,双方都必须进行慎重的决策;旅行社决策最优的预订数量;航空公司决策最优的供给量。本文正是在对双方各自最优决策探讨的基础上,对双方的协作机制进行了研究。在模型中,我们考虑了双方的缺票损失、航空公司的超额预订等因素。双方协作的目标是在实现整体收益最大化的基础上,同时实现航空公司和旅行社各自的收益更大化。本文提出了一种中间价格调整的协作机制,并说明了这种机制的可行性和收敛性。     

A DEA-based two-stage network approach for hotel performance analysis: An internal cooperation perspective

In the digital era, cooperation has become a new way of firm operation, but only rarely have studies investigated how internal cooperative mechanisms among departments affect firm performance evaluation. Grounded on resource-based view theory, a two-stage network structure model of a hotel (i.e. operations stage and marketing stage) is presented, illustrating how a hotel consumes internal resources and obtains competitive advantages and market profits. A DEA-based bi-objective model is put forward to evaluate the hotel performance from the perspective that the two internal stages cooperate with each other. To solve the proposed model, an extended augmented weighted Tchebycheff metric and a new algorithm are used. An empirical analysis using data from 68 Taiwanese international tourist hotels in 2011 was conducted, and the results corroborated the theorems and remarks about the proposed model. This study offers a comprehensive benchmarking tool to improve hotel decision-making.     

论饭店资源需求战略的系统定位模式

饭店是由各种饭店资源所组合而成的竞争实体,饭店资源的需求战略是饭店对自身所需资源的一种系统规划,它决定了饭店的动态竞争能力。它应该以饭店的生命周期、市场需求和资源柔性作为其基本的决策维度,这同时也是饭店资源需求战略系统定位模式的建构基础。     

论饭店企业品牌忠诚的创建

在当前的竞争形势下,饭店企业要想增加市场占有率非常困难。饭店有必要由追求市场占有率的扩大转向追求良好顾客关系的保持。本文在分析品牌忠诚对饭店企业的重要性以及品牌忠诚的决定因素的基础上,探讨了饭店企业创建品牌忠诚的策略。     

DYNAMIC OPERATING RULES FOR MOTEL RESERVATIONS

When customers call a motel or a hotel to reserve a particular room (large, small, suites, single-bed, double-bed, etc.) decisions have to be made concerning the allocation of the available rooms. This paper presents a model for determining the maximum number of specific bookings that should be made for each type of room. The objective is to maximize the expected contribution to profit per rental day. The model considers the distribution of requests for reservations over time as well as cancellations. Also included are the effects of late (unbooked) arrivals and overbookings.     

Managing appointments with waiting time targets and random walk-ins

The random arrivals of walk-in patients significantly affect the daily operations of healthcare facilities. To improve the performance of outpatient departments, this paper attempts to make an appointment schedule by considering walk-ins and the waiting time target (WTT) for appointment patients. A stochastic programming model is proposed to solve this problem with the objective of minimizing the weighted patient waiting and makespan cost. A non-decreasing waiting cost function is used to capture the WTT fulfillment of appointment patients, whereas walk-ins incur a linear waiting cost. A finite-horizon Markov Decision Process model is formulated to establish the optimal real-time scheduling policy under a given appointment schedule. The appointment schedule is determined by a two-stage stochastic programming approximation and a local search improvement. Structural properties of the optimal appointment scheduling and real-time scheduling policies are established. In particular, it is shown that appointment overbooking is allowed only at the end of the regular session, and the optimal real-time scheduling policy is an easy-to-implement threshold policy with bounded sensitivity. Numerical experiments based on real data are performed to investigate the influence of different parameters and to compare different schedules. The optimal schedule demonstrates superior performance by allowing reasonable waiting times for appointment patients depending on their WTTs. Managerial insights are also provided to hospital managers. Finally, the basic model is extended by incorporating random service times and random arrivals of appointment patients. The latter includes the random number of patients that show up for service or call for appointments, and the random arrival time (unpunctuality). Appointment overbooking strategies are shown to have different structures under some stochastic factors.     

基于收益管理的邮轮客舱分配与定价模型

基于收益管理的思想对邮轮客舱分配与定价问题进行了研究。结合邮轮运营中的个性化特点，例如消费者团体人员构成多样、较长的预售周期以及救生位和儿童看护人员的数量限制等。在不失一般性的前提下，建立了整数规划模型用以确定在预售周期内的不同预售阶段中各种客舱类型的待售数量及其价格，以达到使邮轮公司收益最大化的目的。实验分析表明，该模型在实际应用中是有效的且呈现出显著的年增长趋势，可明显提高邮轮公司的收益。此外，设计了一种基于韦伯分布的EM算法用以解决模型中涉及到的需求量的无约束估计问题。数值算例研究表明，该算法收敛速度快且无约束估计过程可靠有效。     

Cooperation among competitors as status-seeking behavior: Network ties and status differentiation

Status-based affiliation represents a valuable resource in economic exchange. However, affiliation strategies introduce a status ordering paradox: whereas higher status actors seek to maintain status hierarchies, lower status actors strive to affiliate with more prestigious actors. In this paper, using original data on the network of social and professional ties among 72 hotel managers clustered in an Italian hotel district, we develop a theory of status-seeking behavior that involves the exchange of status for valued resources.     

Operations research in the management of the airlines

This paper is intended to present an introduction to the use of operations research in the international airline industry, and to demonstrate the scope and significance of the airline OR activities. First, the special reasons for the viability and spread of airline OR are discussed. Then a functional framework for an airline is outlined, to be used in analyzing the problems of an airline and relating the OR work to it. Four major applications are described, corresponding to four major components of the framework. These applications are: schedule development, overbooking control, crew scheduling and engine management, respectively. In each case we describe the problem and its significance, indicate the types of solution techniques which have been developed, and assess the implemented solutions. The paper concludes with comments on the current state-of-the-art and the future of airline OR. A detailed bibliography is given.Both of the authors have been operations research directors in major airlines and more recently have focused their attention upon the industry as academic researchers. This background has provided us with an unusual opportunity to analyze the role of OR in the airlines, and our paper seeks to share with the reader some of the insights we have gained thereby.     

Managerial Responses to Online Reviews: A Text Analytics Approach

This study tests the effects of online managerial responses and returning customers’ future satisfaction (measured as review ratings) by performing social media text analytics on a hotel sample. Essentially, this paper provides insight into meaningful differences in future ratings between responding and non‐responding hotels, as well as differences in response styles between ratings improvement and non‐improvement. The results indicate that: (1) subsequent ratings are higher if customers receive responses to their previous online reviews; (2) increase in ratings is more significant among low‐satisfaction customers, and a decrease in ratings is mitigated if responses are provided; (3) responding to loyal customers – those who have visited and rated the same hotel more than three times – has a limited impact on ratings; (4) responses are longer and sentiment is slightly lower in scenarios where subsequent ratings are improved, but there is no significant difference in the effect of response speed between the two groups; (5) changes in ratings also affect styles of responding to current reviews – if customer satisfaction has improved, response length tends to be shorter and sentiment level tends to be higher. The findings offer both theoretical and managerial implications by demonstrating the utility of social media text analytics.     

Managing international business operations in a changing institutional context: The case of the St. Petersburg hotel industry

This article advances the institutional view of business strategy by analyzing the post-socialist institutional transition in Russia and its implications for business strategies in the St. Petersburg hotel industry. The development of the institutional context is divided into three periods: socialist, early transition and late transition. The strategies of foreign hotel enterprises characteristic of each period are investigated with respect to entry/ownership mode, product, supply and human resource management strategies, and sales and marketing. The study is based on 24 semi-structured interviews with hotel managers, and a variety of local archival sources.The analysis shows how tightly companies are integrated with the formal and informal macro- and industry-level institutional context of Russia. In the case of the hotel industry, the impact of the change in the institutional context from a centrally planned to a market economy centers on the connections of the hotel enterprise with public and private sector actors. Here, empirical analysis shows that first, the degree of integration varied between the three time periods examined, second, many relevant institutional effects are observed at industry level, and third, foreign and local enterprises differ especially during the period of rapid institutional change.     

Pricing,Allocation, and Overbooking in Dynamic Service Network Competition When Demand Is Uncertain

We study the problem of combined pricing, resource allocation, and overbooking by service providers involved in dynamic noncooperative oligopolistic competition on a network that represents the relationships of the providers to one another and to their customers when service demand is uncertain. We propose, analyze, and compute solutions for a model that is more general than other models reported in the revenue management literature to date. In particular, previous models typically consider only three or four of five key revenue management features that we have purposely built into our model: (1) pricing, (2) resource allocation, (3) dynamic competition, (4) an explicit network, and (5) uncertain demand. Illustrative realizations of the abstract problem we study are those of airline revenue management and service provision by companies facing resource constraints. Under fairly general regularity conditions, we prove existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium for dynamic oligopolistic service network competition described by our model. We also show, for an appropriate notion of regularity, that competition leads to the underpricing of network services, a finding numerically illustrated by an example of intermediate size. Our proposed algorithm can be implemented using well‐known off‐the‐shelf commercial software.     

Appointment Scheduling with No‐Shows and Overbooking

We study an overbooking model for scheduling arrivals at a medical facility under no‐show behavior, with patients having different no‐show probabilities and different weights. The scheduler has to assign the patients to time slots in such a way that she minimizes the expected weighted sum of the patients' waiting times and the doctor's idle time and overtime. We first consider the static problem, where the set of patients to be scheduled and their characteristics are known in advance. We partially characterize the optimal schedule and introduce a new sequencing rule that schedules patients according to a single index that is a function of their characteristics. Then we apply our theoretical results and conclusions from numerical experiments to sequential scheduling procedures. We propose a heuristic solution to the sequential scheduling problem, where requests for appointments come in gradually over time and the scheduler has to assign each patient to one of the remaining slots that are available in the schedule for a given day. We find that the no‐show rate and patients' heterogeneity have a significant impact on the optimal schedule and should be taken under consideration.