最新消息

Early-bird pricing and close-to-travel-date premiums are what we have come to expect. but as the low-cost model becomes more diverse and complex, what will revenue management mean for the low-cost airlines?

Stanislav Solomko, Senior Consultant, Lufthansa Consulting, says "Yield management for low-cost airlines is based on targeting point-to-point customers." He says the following techniques summarise low-cost yield management: "Tracking competition and their inventory availability (web-scraping); monitoring the booking curve and current load situation; having a thorough knowledge of the peak demand periods (business travel times and days, holidays, special events); and having a flexible pricing structure that supports quick adjustments in yield strategy."

Asked what a legacy carrier has to do in terms of yield/revenue management to transform itself into a low-cost carrier, Solomko says: "The modification and simplification of the pricing structure would be a key condition for adopting a low-fare distribution model by a legacy carrier."

Solomko continues: "The fares have to change from a traditional round-trip to a one-way basis. The yield management strategy would have to be fine-tuned to base it on reaching a specific load factor trigger, at which point a lower-end booking class would no longer be available. In this case, the yield management replaces the traditional pricing "fences" such as Saturday night stay."