航空公司收入管理价格与舱位控制的统一分析

Comprehensive analysis of pricing and seat inventory control in airline revenue management

收入管理对于改善民航企业的经济效益、增强民航企业的竞争能力具有重大意义.文章运用随机过程理论和最大凹向包络原理,探讨航空公司客运收入管理研究中动态价格与舱位控制的统一分析模型,即在任意订票时刻,决定航班的哪些舱位该开放,以什么价格开放,从而实现单个航班的收入最大化.文章指出,航空公司可通过三阶段方法来获取最优的动态价格与舱位控制策略,即确定最优价格集、开放舱位数及最优价格.最后给出了实例分析.

Pricing and seat inventory control are primary strategies for airlines to improve their profitability and competitiveness. In the past, however, research in these two areas has been carried out independently. This article proposes a comprehensive model that integrates the two decision processes in airline revenue management. It assumes that the airline serves multiple fare classes. Demand of each fare class follows a Poisson process whose intensity is time dependent. Given the state of remaining seats and time-to-go, the airline determines an optimal fare-mix and an optimal fare for the customer class if it is open. It develops a three-stage strategy for the optimal policy which is fairly simple and tractable. Numerical examples are provided.