Revenue management is a true operations research success story.
Experiments with the idea of revenue management, or yield management, as it was then called, started in the airline O.R. departments of the 1970's. Deregulation of the airline industry at the end of the decade made systematic revenue management a necessity for the survival of any airline. Today revenue management is embraced by car rental companies, hotels, cruise lines, golf courses, and many other industries that face the difficult problem of managing perishable assets such as an airline seat on a specific flight, or a berth on a specific voyage. The power of this operations research methodology has literally saved companies from extinction. It was particularly interesting to hear how one of the pioneers of this important discipline is pushing forward new developments.