The evolution of competitor data collection in the hotel industry and its application to revenue management and pricing

This paper explores the move towards the collection and processing of hotel competitor set data since the late 1970s. It identifies a shift from using internal metrics to measure the revenue generating capabilities of a hotel, such as performance against budget, to the use of large amounts of detailed competitor set data processed for hotels by third parties. It analyses the impacts of these changes on the way pricing and revenue decisions are made and suggests the modern manager may have become over focussed on competitor data, potentially diverting the focus from hospitality specific success factors, such as customer service. Keywords : competitor data, hotels, revenue management, price decision-making

Manager perceptions of big data reliability in revenue management.

This paper investigates the perceptions that managers have of the value and reliability of using big data to make hotel revenue management and pricing decisions. Whilst big data-driven automated revenue systems are technically capable of making pricing and inventory decisions without user input, the findings here show that the reality is that managers still interact with every stage of the revenue and pricing process from data collection to the implementation of price changes. They believe their personal insights are as valid as big data in increasing the reliability of the decision-making process. This is driven primarily by a lack of trust on the behalf of managers in the ability of the big data systems to understand and interpret local market and customer dynamics. The less a manager believes in the ability of those systems to interpret this data, the more they perceive gut-instinct to increase the reliability of their decision-making and the less they conduct an analysis of the statistical data provided by the systems. This provides a clear message that there appears to be a need for automated revenue systems to be flexible enough for managers to import the local data, information, and knowledge that they believe leads to revenue growth

Big data usage in transient hotel room pricing: deconstructing a black box

This research explains the use of big data in transient hotel room price decision-making, where transient prices are those charged to individuals rather than groups or those with specially negotiated corporate rates (Hayes & Miller, 2011; Ideas, 2018). From a practice-based viewpoint, this issue had not been fully explored in the literature and the links between big data and pricing in the hospitality literature appeared particularly blurred. It was also directly suggested that more empirical research was needed into big data "issues" (Raguseo, 2018, p.187). Crucially, it was felt that the complexities and realities of the use of big data in transient hotel room price decision-making, in particular at the individual property level, were situated within a black box that required deconstruction. To achieve this, Straussian grounded theory was utilised. The speed of development of the literature on big data and the many gaps in the literature in this area of hotel pricing made it a challenge to develop hypotheses to test. Instead, this approach allowed for the successful deconstruction of the black box by generating a substantive theoretical framework that could explain the use of big data on the transient hotel room price decision-making process. This resulted in three main contributions to knowledge. The first was that big data was not the only input into the price decision-making process. In fact, through various discussion processes the general manager and revenue specialists, where present, interacted to reinterpret the big data with small data, which was characterised by customer insights locally generated in the hotel property. This formed a new type of hybridised data. The discovery of this hybridised data also meant it was possible to reconstruct the Vs framework, commonly used to define big data. This resulted in the contribution of a new typology of pricing data within the hotel context. The second contribution was uncovered whilst observing the use of hybridised data within the price decision-making process. Here the countervailing forces of local market dynamics, characterised by the stability and predictability of demand factors, resulted in a simplified interpretation of the hybridised data. General Managers felt a pressure to make a decision that often, given the unpredictability of the market, became a decision made using trial and error, short-term, tactical approaches that did not incorporate the full range of hybridised data available to them. Observing these processes also allowed for a more general contribution by allowing fresh insights into the role of the general manager to bring up-to-date the existing literature on the role. Ultimately it discovered that the impacts of big data on price decision-making were not as significant as the hype around big data would suggest. Market forces proved more powerful than the data. This suggests not only that economics should become a greater part of revenue education but also that although the technology is capable of making constant, instantaneous price changes the process of decision-making should be slowed down. This would, in turn, make decision-making less reactive as there would be time to factor in all the hybridised data that has been generated as overall fewer decisions would be made

The perceptions of frontline employees towards hotel overbooking practices: exploring ethical challenges

This paper explores the ethical perceptions of frontline hotel employees towards hotel overbooking policies. Thus far, the majority of literature has focused on the ethics of overbooking from the guests' perspective. This research finds that frontline employees form an ethical ideology based on their perceived need to deliver hospitableness to the guest. Overbooking is viewed as a threat to the host-guest relationship. However, if frontline employees can offer relevant compensation to guests and give advanced warning of an outbooking scenario they perceive that an ethical balance between hospitableness and commercially-driven overbooking practices can be achieved

Campsite revenue management decision-making - a semi-systematic review

This paper provides a semi-systematic review of the extant literature surrounding the concept of camping and campground revenue management from 1984 until 2023 and presents a conceptual model that encircles and categorizes all the subjects treated in the previous research which was found to be disparate and multidisciplinary in nature. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the state of knowledge in the field and a conceptual structuring of the topic which was previously lacking. By synthesising the various disparate conceptual strands of the topic that have developed over time, the paper presents a revenue management decision-support tool tailored for campsites that organizes the camping revenue management literature around its own conceptual model whilst also highlighting areas for future research

An evaluation of section 1 of the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012

A mixed methods evaluation of a legislation introduced by the Scottish Government to tackle sectarian and other offensive behaviours at regulated fotoball matche

Influence of the Spatial Distribution of Cationic Functional Groups at Nanoparticle Surfaces on Bacterial Viability and Membrane Interactions

While positively charged nanomaterials induce cytotoxicity in many organisms, much less is known about how the spatial distribution and presentation of molecular surface charge impact nanoparticle–biological interactions. We systematically functionalized diamond nanoparticle surfaces with five different cationic surface molecules having different molecular structures and conformations, including four small ligands and one polymer, and we then probed the molecular-level interaction between these nanoparticles and bacterial cells. Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 was used as a model bacterial cell system to investigate how the molecular length and conformation of cationic surface charges influence their interactions with the Gram-negative bacterial membranes. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) demonstrate the covalent modification of the nanoparticle surface with the desired cationic organic monolayers. Surprisingly, bacterial growth-based viability (GBV) and membrane damage assays both show only minimal biological impact by the NPs functionalized with short cationic ligands within the concentration range tested, yet NPs covalently linked to a cationic polymer induce strong cytotoxicity, including reduced cellular viability and significant membrane damage at the same concentration of cationic groups. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images of these NP-exposed bacterial cells show that NPs functionalized with cationic polymers induce significant membrane distortion and the production of outer membrane vesicle-like features, while NPs bearing short cationic ligands only exhibit weak membrane association. Our results demonstrate that the spatial distribution of molecular charge plays a key role in controlling the interaction of cationic nanoparticles with bacterial cell membranes and the subsequent biological impact. Nanoparticles functionalized with ligands having different lengths and conformations can have large differences in interactions even while having nearly identical zeta potentials. While the zeta potential is a convenient and commonly used measure of nanoparticle charge, it does not capture essential differences in molecular-level nanoparticle properties that control their biological impact