ABSTRACT
Marriott, for example, has been a leader in revenue management practice (Cross, 1997, p. 64). They defined a “customer category” as a combination of price and nonprice attributes that a hotel customer faces when making a hotel decision. Two key elements of Marriott’s yield management approach have been what they call (1) the strategic yield management approach and (2) the tactical yield manage ment approach. The strategic approach (Wind, Green, Shifflet, & Scarbrough, 1989) uses conjoint analysis to determine which assortment of customer categories would best position Marriott relative to their competition. This approach is used when either a new brand of hotel is being designed or significant modifications to a brand’s customer category set are contemplated. The tactical approach develops computer systems to essentially determine which customer categories to keep open and which to close for sale depending on the intended date of first stayover and length of stay (Cross, p. 140). The objective is to maximize revenue given the fixed assortment of customer categories. This paper addresses the tactical problem.
