Revenue Management with Heterogeneous Resources: Unit Resource Capacities, Advance Bookings, and Itineraries over Time Intervals

Abstract

There are a variety of revenue management systems that require making pricing or availability decisions for unique resources. For example, lodging marketplaces, boutique hotels, and bed-and-breakfasts offer unique rooms, apartments, or houses. Matching platforms for freelancers recommend differentiated workers with unique characteristics. When managing unique resources, one has to keep track of the availability of each resource at each time point in the future. Moreover, if the customers substitute between different resources, then the pricing and availability decisions for all resources become interdependent. Thus, it can be challenging to find good policies to make pricing or availability decisions. In “Revenue Management with Heterogeneous Resources: Unit Resource Capacities, Advance Bookings, and Itineraries over Time Intervals,” Rusmevichientong, Sumida, Topaloglu, and Bai consider revenue management problems when unique resources are requested for use over intervals of time under advance reservations. Using the interval structure of resource requests, they give policies with performance guarantees.