Innovative Revenue Management Practices with Probabilistic Elements

Sale of products with a probabilistic nature, where customers do not know which product they will receive at the time of service, has become popular over the recent years. In the revenue management literature, there has been a growing interest in understanding these modern approaches using analytical techniques. On the other hand, customer-centric revenue management has been replacing the long-standing inventory-centric approach because of the availability of rich data sets by focusing on understanding and predicting customer behavior and then optimizing price and/or quantity related decisions. In this dissertation, we take a customer-centric approach and do not only provide analytical results, but also empirically investigate how customers make their decisions, which is crucial in order to implement appropriate strategies. We first focus on an innovative hotel revenue management practice called standby upgrades, i.e., a practice where the guest is only charged for the discounted upgrade if it is available at the time of arrival. In particular, Chapter 2 discusses how to optimally price standby upgrades and evaluates their benefits through an analytical model. Chapter 3 uses a major hotel chain’s booking and standby upgrades data to investigate the extent of strategic guest behavior through empirical analysis. Then, we focus on another innovative revenue management practice, but in the mega event industry, called team-specific ticket options. Chapter 4 studies fans’ decision-making process for the 2015 College Football season using a unique data set

Multiple multimodal mobile devices: Lessons learned from engineering lifelog solutions

For lifelogging, or the recording of one’s life history through digital means, to be successful, a range of separate multimodal mobile devices must be employed. These include smartphones such as the N95, the Microsoft SenseCam – a wearable passive photo capture device, or wearable biometric devices. Each collects a facet of the bigger picture, through, for example, personal digital photos, mobile messages and documents access history, but unfortunately, they operate independently and unaware of each other. This creates significant challenges for the practical application of these devices, the use and integration of their data and their operation by a user. In this chapter we discuss the software engineering challenges and their implications for individuals working on integration of data from multiple ubiquitous mobile devices drawing on our experiences working with such technology over the past several years for the development of integrated personal lifelogs. The chapter serves as an engineering guide to those considering working in the domain of lifelogging and more generally to those working with multiple multimodal devices and integration of their data

Hozammenedzsment és ároptimalizáció a hotelszektorban

Jelen munkámban a szállodaipar működését alapjaiban megváltoztató folyamatokkal, így a dinamikus árazással, a hozammenedzsmenttel és az ároptimalizációval foglalkozom. Ezen folyamatok az utóbbi évek során komoly hatást gyakoroltak a szállodák működésére. A hotelek célja az utóbbi években, hogy megfelelő szegmentáció segítségével minden vendég, minden vevő számára ideális ajánlatot tudjanak nyújtani, növelve ezzel a fogyasztók lojalitását, márkahűségét, visszatérési hajlandóságát. A hozammenedzsment rendszerek alkalmazását ma már a hotelek minden részlegére ki kell terjeszteni annak érdekében, hogy az esetlegesen kisebb nyereséget hajtó részlegek más osztályok felé irányítsák a vendégeket, így növelve a teljes tartózkodás során elért haszon teljes mennyiségét. A teljes hotelszektor működésére is kihat ugyanakkor az online utazásszervezők megjelenése, akik a korábbi utazási irodáktól teljesen eltérő szemlélettel szervezik útjaikat, támaszkodva ennek során azokra a nagy online minősítő rendszerekre, amelyek a magánfelhasználók fogyasztói döntéseire is komoly hatással vannak. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to deal with those trends which are affecting the whole operation of the hotel industry including dynamic pricing, yield management and price optimisation. These processes had great impact on the operation of the hotels in the last few years. The aims of the operation of the hotels in the last years were to find the ideal offer for all the guests with the help of the segmentation. This way hotels can increase the loyalty and brand loyalty of their customers and their willingness to return to the hotel again. The use of the yield management systems should have been extended to all the parts and departments of the hotel in order to direct the guests between the more and less profitable departments. This way the total realised profit for the whole stay of the guest can be increased. The presence and appearance of the online travel agencies have effects on the whole tourism and hospitality sector because the new actors are organising their offered journeys with a different philosophy. During their work they are using the big databases built by the online ranking systems which have big effect on the guests’ decisions as well

Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide Retail Buildings

The Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide for Retail Buildings is a component of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Energy Retrofit Guides for Existing Buildings series. The aim of the guides is to facilitate a rapid escalation in the number of energy efficiency projects in existing buildings and to enhance the quality and depth of those projects. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as financial payback metrics for the most common energy efficiency measures, these guides provide a practical roadmap to effectively planning and implementing performance improvements for existing buildings

Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide (AERG): Practical Ways to Improve Energy Performance; Healthcare Facilities (Book)

The Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide for Healthcare Facilities is part of a series of retrofit guides commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as detailed descriptions and financial payback metrics for the most important and relevant energy efficiency measures (EEMs), the guides provide a practical roadmap for effectively planning and implementing performance improvements in existing buildings. The Advanced Energy Retrofit Guides (AERGs) are intended to address key segments of the U.S. commercial building stock: retail stores, office buildings, K-12 schools, grocery stores, and healthcare facilities. The guides' general project planning considerations are applicable nationwide; the energy and cost savings estimates for recommended EEMs were developed based on energy simulations and cost estimates for an example hospital tailored to five distinct climate regions. These results can be extrapolated to other U.S. climate zones. Analysis is presented for individual EEMs, and for packages of recommended EEMs for two project types: existing building commissioning projects that apply low-cost and no-cost measures, and whole-building retrofits involving more capital-intensive measures

Virtualisation and Thin Client : A Survey of Virtual Desktop environments

This survey examines some of the leading commercial Virtualisation and Thin Client technologies. Reference is made to a number of academic research sources and to prominent industry specialists and commentators. A basic virtualisation Laboratory model is assembled to demonstrate fundamental Thin Client operations and to clarify potential problem areas

Profitable thermal renovation of hotels to combat climate change and depletion of fossil fuels: the case of Cyprus

Hotel buildings were identified as significant energy consumers. Within the theoretical framework of the thesis it was argued that climate change and increasing energy prices due to depletion of fossil fuels would cause pressure on hotel operations in Cyprus by increasing their cooling loads and operational costs. The analysis was techno-socio-economic and the core aim was to evaluate the costeffectiveness of selected energy saving strategies. These were in the form of building envelope upgrades, changes in indoor environmental criteria and introduction of renewable energy technology via solar air-conditioning to be implemented as part of the hotels’ periodic scheduled building and systems upgrades with the aim of lowering their space conditioning energy costs and improving their profitability and competitiveness. The applied methodology consisted of auditing of a case study hotel, energy consumption data collection both from a sample of hotels and industry-wide and a hotel guest survey. Thermal simulation of hotels in present and future climates was used to identify technically viable renovation strategies. Strategies found cost-effective were further checked for sensitivity to energy prices, hotel occupancy and climate. The major findings of the thesis predict over 20% savings in space conditioning energy costs due to strategic building envelope upgrades, over 50% savings if in addition adjustments in thermal comfort criteria are included and over 80% savings if solar AC is added into the above. It was further found that with a minimal increase in room rates hotels could implement thermal renovation while maintaining or even increasing room income. A unique cost-efficiency indicator that measures profitability of the proposed energy saving strategies in terms of hotels’ room income generation potential was developed in this thesis. Finally, if the suggested renovations were implemented on a mass scale, one quarter of Cyprus’ national energy saving and renewable energy targets could be met

Lamont Bair Enterprises, Inc. v. City of Idaho Falls Clerk\u27s Record Dckt. 45819

https://digitalcommons.law.uidaho.edu/idaho_supreme_court_record_briefs/8463/thumbnail.jp

Annual reports of the officers, trustees, agents, committees, and organizations of the town of Windham, New Hampshire for the year 2019.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

A Guideline for Environmental Games (GEG) and a randomized controlled evaluation of a game to increase environmental knowledge related to human population growth

People often have very little knowledge about the impact of unsustainable human population growth on the environment and social well-being especially in developing countries. Therefore, an efficient method should be explored in order to educate, and if possible, to convince the members of the public to realize the environmental and social problems caused by the unsustainable population growth. Digital Game-Based Learning (DGBL) has been highlighted by some studies as an innovative tool for learning enhancement. While only a handful of studies have scientifically evaluated the impact of DGBL on knowledge outcomes, the approach is an attractive tool to increase knowledge and motivate engagement with environmental issues surrounding population growth because of its potential to improve learners’ motivation and engagement thereby compared to traditional learning approaches. Therefore, the three primary research questions for this study are: 1) "Can a single-player digital game be an appropriate and attractive learning application for the players to gain insight about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues?" 2) "How can we design environmental games for the players to gain insights about the relationship between the growing human population and the environmental issues via playing a game?" and 3) "What are the obstacles preventing the players from adapting environmental knowledge obtained from the learning mediums into the real-life?" To inform the development of an efficacious DGBL game to impact learning outcomes, critical reviews of environmental issues related to population growth as well as critical reviews of commercial and serious environmental games in terms of their educational and motivational values were undertaken in this study. The results of these critical reviews informed the development of a Guideline for Environmental Games (or GEG). The GEG was developed by combining the engaging game technology with environmental learning and persuasion theories. The GEG was then used to inform the development of a prototype game called THE GROWTH; a single-player, quiz-based, city-management game targeting young adolescents and adults. Multiple evaluation methods of the game were used to answer the three key research questions mentioned earlier. These methods included: 1) The Randomized Controlled Trial approach (RCT) where the participants were systematically divided into the experimental and the control group respectively and their knowledge scores (quantitative data) compared and analyzed, 2) The participants’ abilities to recall and describe the environmental and well-being issues were collected and analyzed qualitatively using The Content Analysis method (CA) and, 3) The participants’ overall feedback on the learning mediums was collected and analyzed to evaluate the motivational values of THE GROWTH itself. To this end, THE GROWTH was evaluated with 82 Thai-nationality participants (70 males and 12 females). The results showed that participants assigned to play THE GROWTH demonstrated greater environmental and social-well-being knowledge related to population growth (F(1,40) = 43.86, p = .006) compared to the control group participants assigned to a non-interactive reading activity (consistent with material presented in THE GROWTH). Furthermore, participants who played THE GROWTH recalled on average more content presented in the game when compared to participants who were presented with similar content in the reading material (t (59) = 3.35, p = .001). In terms of level of engagement, the study suggested that participants assigned to the game were more engaging with their learning medium on average when compared to participants assigned to the non-interactive reading activity. This is evidenced by the longer time participants spent on the task, the activity observed from participants’ recorded gameplay, and their positive responses in the survey. The semi-structured interviews used in this study highlighted the participants’ attitudes towards the environmental, social, and technological issues. Although the participants’ perceived behavioural intention towards the environmental commitments were not statistically differed between the two study group, their responses still provide some evidences that leaps may occur from the learning mediums to the real-world context. Furthermore, these responses can be valuable evidences for the policy makers and for the future development of environmental serious games. Overall, the results suggested that digital environmental games such as THE GROWTH might be an effective and motivational tool in promote the learning about sustainable population size, the environment, and the social well-being. The game’s ability to convince the participants to change towards sustainable lifestyles, however, might be subjected to the future research and other real-world circumstances such as the governmental and public supports. In summary, the research in this thesis makes the following contributions to knowledge: • The Guideline for Environmental Games (GEG) contributes to knowledge about making theoretically-based environmental games. It has particular significance because the guideline was validated by demonstrating learning improvements in a systematic randomized controlled trial. • The use of Multi-Strategy Study Design where multiple systematic evaluation methods were used in conjunction to provide conclusive findings about the efficacy of DGBL to impact outcomes. • THE GROWTH itself is a contribution to applied research as an example of an effective DGBL learning tool