Revenue Management Integration: The Financial Performance Contribution of an Integrated Revenue Management Process for Hotels

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: An integrated approach to Revenue Management (RM), which spans over various disciplines, has frequently been proposed for tourism companies providing perishable products of fixed capacity, such as hotel chains, to fully capture the potential of total profit optimization. Kimes and Wagner (2001) defined the general strategy of revenue management as the practice used by service firms with fixed capacity to match the supply of a perishable commodity with forecasted demand via strategies that manipulate price and time of consumption. Furthermore, revenue management and pricing programs have commonly been praised to have the potential to increase revenues by 3 to 8 % which can in turn result in 50 to 100 % profit improvements. This thesis proposes a departmental and functional integration of various activities to arrive at an integrated revenue management approach that is viewed as the necessary reaction to changing market environment conditions. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been changing the tourism industry structure globally, while developing many new opportunities and threats. In this new environment, revenue management becomes as important and challenging as never before and to operate effectively, skills are required to combine several knowledge areas steadily and creatively to make profit from the process. Consequently, it is proposed that particularly due to the modern tourism environment, companies have to make use of strategic integrated revenue management to offset the threats and take advantage of opportunities that the modern tourism environment represents. An integrated approach to revenue management spans the disciplines of yield management, pricing, marketing, sales and e-commerce distribution and seeks to identify linkages to effectively and efficiently coordinate activities in the different areas to arrive at total profit optimization. The thesis is designed to illustrate how Revenue Management Integration (RMI) could be achieved, and the research part aims to asses whether hotel chains that embrace a higher degree of Revenue Management Integration operate at higher profitability.1.1. Research Questions This thesis is designed to evaluate whether an integrated revenue management process provides benefits in terms of financial performance to tourism companies selling perishable inventory such as hotel chains, in particular in a changed and more competitive tourism environment. [...]