Optimal Dual Pricing and Passenger Safety Level for Cruise Revenue Management

Abstract

: Despite the remarkable continual growth of the world cruise industry, studies have yet to be attempted on many revenue management problems in cruise operations. This paper suggests two schemes that can be easily applied to cruise revenue management: optimal dual pricing and passenger safety level. In optimal dual pricing, a pair of higher and lower prices is applied to cabin reservation through market segmentation. This scheme can be executed with a linear price-response function for the current unreserved cabins. A cruise line could benefit from this scheme to maximize reservation revenue while attaining full occupancy. The dual pricing scheme is also devised to produce only integer demands to suit real management practices. The life boat capacity is an additional service capacity unique to the cruise industry, catering to passengers' safety. The concept of passenger safety level is defined and computed for any passenger life boat capacity of a cruise ship. It can be used to evaluate the passenger safety of a cruise ship in operation, as well as to determine the number of life boat seats required for a new cruise ship. Hypothetical examples are used to illustrate the operation of these two schemes.