IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v44y1996i1p35-49.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Managing Hotel Reservations with Uncertain Arrivals

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel R. Bitran

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

  • Stephen M. Gilbert

    (Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio)

Abstract

Based on our interactions with managers at two large hotels, we present a realistic model of the hotel reservation problem. Unlike traditional models, ours does not assume that all customers arrive simultaneously on the targeted booking date. We explain why this assumption may not be appropriate for the hotel industry and develop a model of reservation booking which explicitly includes the room allocation decisions which are made on the targeted booking date. Based on observations of how the problem is solved in practice as well as the insights gained from this analysis, we develop simple heuristic procedures for accepting reservations. Computational results demonstrate that these heuristics perform well relative to an upper bound that is based on perfect information about reservations requests and customer arrivals.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel R. Bitran & Stephen M. Gilbert, 1996. "Managing Hotel Reservations with Uncertain Arrivals," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 44(1), pages 35-49, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:44:y:1996:i:1:p:35-49
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.44.1.35
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.44.1.35
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.44.1.35?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:44:y:1996:i:1:p:35-49. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.