Delayed purchase options in single-leg revenue management

Many airline reservation systems offer the commitment option to their potential passengers. This option allows passengers to reserve a seat for a fixed duration before making a final purchase decision. In this study, we develop single-leg revenue management models that consider such contingent commitment decisions. We start with a dynamic programming model of this problem. This model is computationally intractable as it requires storing a multidimensional state space because of bookkeeping of the committed seats. To alleviate this difficulty, we propose an alternate dynamic programming formulation that uses an approximate model of how the contingent commitments behave and we show how to extract a capacity allocation policy from the approximate dynamic programming formulation. In addition, we present a deterministic linear programming model that gives an upper bound on the optimal expected revenue from the intractable dynamic programming model. As the problem size becomes large in terms of flight capacity and the expected number of arrivals, we demonstrate an asymptotic lower bound for the deterministic linear programming model. Our extensive numerical study indicates that offering commitment options can noticeably increase potential revenue even though offering a contingent commitment option may not always be in the best interest of the airline. Also, our results show that the proposed approximate dynamic programming model coordinates capacity allocation and commitment decisions quite well

Revenue management nas companhias aéreas: alteração de modelos tarifários

Orientação: Álvaro Lopes DiasAo longo desta dissertação estudou-se o impacto do Revenue management e elasticidade de preço na rentabilidade de uma companhia aérea, tendo como objectivo entender o impacto que as politicas tarifárias, Marketing e a competitividade no mercado têm na rentabilidade da mesma e avaliar a diferença entre uma companhia aérea Low Cost e Legacy. Efectuou-se a pesquisa de artigos que abrangem-se o tema do estudo, com o auxílio do Google Académico, procedendo-se à avaliação, selecção e tratamento dos variados artigos. Posteriormente analisaram-se os dados obtidos, referentes ao modelo conceptual do estudo, através de estatística discretiva, correlações, testes de hipóteses e regressão linear. Constatouse que as políticas tarifárias afectam a rentabilidade de uma companhia aérea, afectando assim o seu Revenue Management. Observou-se também que o Marketing não tem influência na rentabilidade de uma companhia aérea, resultados que não vão ao encontro com a revisão de literatura do estudo. Para reforço da exactidão dos resultados obtidos, em futuros estudos sobre o tema, seria ideal um aumento da amostra. Considera-se que também é possível aplicar o modelo conceptual para o estudo de outros sectores do turismo.It was studied the impact of Revenue Management and the price elasticity in the profitability of an airline, this dissertation aims to understand the impact that tariff policies, Marketing and market competitiveness has on its profitability as well to evaluate the difference between a Low Cost and a Legacy airline. It was searched for articles that covered the subject of the study, with the help of Google Scholar, proceeding to the evaluation, selection and treatment of the various articles obtained. Later, the data was analyzed, referring to the conceptual model of the study, through descriptive statistics, correlations, hypothesis tests and linear regression. The results show that the tariff policies affect the profitability of an airline, thus affecting its Revenue Management. It was also observed that the marketing had no influence on the profitability of an airline, which doesn’t match with the literature review of the study. For the increase of the accuracy of the obtained results, in future studies on the subject, it would be ideal an increase of the sample. It’s also considered possible to apply the conceptual model for the study in other tourism sectors