邮轮收益管理的舱位分配：基于EMSR-a和EMSR-b的比较分析

邮轮业被称为“漂浮在黄金水道上的黄金产业”，近几年达到8％左右的增长速度，成为现代旅游业中发展最迅速的行业。与航空和酒店业一样，邮轮业具有收益管理的所有行业特征，可以看作是典型的收益管理行业。文章基于北美邮轮市场的实际数据，对邮轮收益管理的需求分布特征和存量分配问题进行了研究。首先，以邮轮公司特定航线的需求数据为基础，将实际数据与多种概论分布进行比较，来挖掘邮轮舱位水平上总需求的分布规律。研究表明，正态分布和伽玛分布能较好地拟合邮轮舱位总需求的分布特征。其次，以正态分布为例，基于EMSR—a和EMSR—b两种舱位分配算法，以某次航行的实际数据为基准需求，对高总需求和低总需求下分别考虑（1）高价格舱位高需求和（2）低价格舱位高需求的4种需求状况进行了模拟，并对两种存量分配方法的分配效果进行了比较。结果表明，两种方法分配效果的优劣取决于实际的需求状况。

Capacity Allocation for Cruise Lines Revenue Management. EMSR-a VS EMSR-b

In recent years, the cruise industry has evolved considerably and emerged to become one of the most rapid developed sectors in the global tourism and hospitality industry, with millions of passengers each year. Annual data from the Cruise Lines International Association （CLIA） indicated that during the period of 1990 to 2012, the number of cruise passengers has grown at an annual rate of over 7% , withl4.82 million in 2010, 16.37 million in 2011 and estimated 17.2 million in 2012. For an industry with explosive growth, however, the cruise sector has attracted a lack of research attention from international researchers. Very limited academic literature has touched this niche form of tourism. Particularly, research on cruise line revenue management has almost been neglected. Like airlines and hotels, cruise lines report all common characteristics of revenue management （RM）： segmented market, fixed or constrained capacity, perishable inventory, finite selling horizons, reservation-based sales, and fluctuated demand. In cruise ships, cabins are divided into different types, i. e. , balcony, interior, ocean view, portholes, suite and deck level （upper or lower） , with different kinds of fare classes. Each kind of cabin has fixed capacities and is sold in advance over a finite booking window. The purpose of cruise lines is to sell a fixed capacity of perishable products to different customer segments over a finite booking horizon in order to maximize the total expected revenue, through various revenue management practices including demand forecasting, demand function estimation, capacity control/allocation, and dynamic pricing. The quality of RM decisions, such as pricing and capacity control, depends on an accurate demand forecast or demand function estimation, to a large extent. The goal of capacity control is to allocate cruise cabins profitably by deciding booking limits for low-priced cabin types or reservation levels for high-priced cabins types from the start to the end of the selling period. Capacity-constrained companies usually set different booking limits in different periods to allocate the fixed capacity to the right customer at the right time. Methods of capacity allocation have been widely studied in airline and hotel RM, but the cruise line industry has received little research attention. In this article, the problem of capacity allocation for cruise line revenue management is considered. We compare the performance of two Expected Marginal Seat Revenue （EMSR） algorisms： EMSR-a and EMSR-b. First of all, a variety of probability distributions, such as Normal distribution, Log-normal distribution, Exponential distribution, Poisson distribution, Gamma distribution, Weibull distribution, Rayleigh distribution and Negative Binomial distribution, are tested to determine the real distributions behind the data of total bookings at cabin type level. The results offer evidence of a reasonable fit for the Normal distribution and Gamma distribution to the data. Then, without loss of generality, normal distribution is used to estimate the demand information for three kinds of cabin types. EMSR-a and EMSR-b are applied to determine the protection level for each cabin type. We simulate four demand situations of combinations of high and low total demand with high low-priced demand and high high- priced demand. Finally, the performance of these two heuristics algorithms is compared. Our results show mixed performance, with neither method dominating the other under different demand situations.