Yield management in advanced systems of hotel management

Abstract

What is the position of yield management in hotel business organisations? What is its potential? Is this totally achieved or is there still an unexpressed margin? And with what organisational form does yield management best develop its potential? Innovations regarding organisational structure and work organisation in hotels have placed in doubt the role and position which yield management currently holds in hotels. This paper analyses, first of all, the principal causes for the failure of yield management systems and then relates these to the organisational structures widespread in the tourism-hospitality business. In this way the characteristics of a mixed or traditional system are analysed, along with the role that yield management plays in it; we shall also analyse a more advanced form of organisation, that of organisational learning, and its ability to strengthen the role and function of yield management, to the point of reaching the most advanced organisational form, still rarely recognisable in practice, which is the learning organisation which manages to develop to the maximum the potential of yield management as a management technique and not merely a technique for the determination of prices and the optimisation of revenue. The paper ends with the formulation of four different scenarios for the evolution of yield management and for their applicability.