Advantages of real-time revenue management

Real-time or event-driven revenue management is a process by which airline seat controls are recalculated and published to control seat availability as passenger bookings are made through the global distribution system (GDS). The approach optimises controls for any subset of flight legs in the network or the entire network simultaneously as bookings are made for itineraries offered on the airline network. This approach provides a great advantage over the current revenue management strategy in which inventory controls are at most re-optimised once every 24 hours via a batch computer job. By re-optimising inventory controls more frequently, the revenue management process can compensate for the variability associated with passenger bookings and either restrict or make available seat inventory when appropriate.