Cargando…

Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China

China Railway Corporation (CRC) has been paid more attention to passenger transportation revenue, with its increase proportion in transportation revenue. Due to the price regulation, the only way CRC can improve ticket sale profit is to find a best seat allocation scheme. This study focuses on the o...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yuan, Wuyang, Nie, Lei
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7173790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32315337
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231706
_version_ 1783524512042582016
author Yuan, Wuyang
Nie, Lei
author_facet Yuan, Wuyang
Nie, Lei
author_sort Yuan, Wuyang
collection PubMed
description China Railway Corporation (CRC) has been paid more attention to passenger transportation revenue, with its increase proportion in transportation revenue. Due to the price regulation, the only way CRC can improve ticket sale profit is to find a best seat allocation scheme. This study focuses on the optimization of railway revenue management problem in China with consideration of i) customer behaviors including their arrival and purchase preferences, ii) a specific ticket booking mechanism called “seat-based control”. To evaluate the performance of seat-based control, we build a Discrete-Time Markov Chain model to describe the ticket reservation process and then design a genetic algorithm to find approximate solutions. The performance of proposed method is tested in two experiments with two other benchmarks. Finally, we apply it to practical data of the Nanning-Guangzhou high-speed railway line.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7173790
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-71737902020-04-27 Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China Yuan, Wuyang Nie, Lei PLoS One Research Article China Railway Corporation (CRC) has been paid more attention to passenger transportation revenue, with its increase proportion in transportation revenue. Due to the price regulation, the only way CRC can improve ticket sale profit is to find a best seat allocation scheme. This study focuses on the optimization of railway revenue management problem in China with consideration of i) customer behaviors including their arrival and purchase preferences, ii) a specific ticket booking mechanism called “seat-based control”. To evaluate the performance of seat-based control, we build a Discrete-Time Markov Chain model to describe the ticket reservation process and then design a genetic algorithm to find approximate solutions. The performance of proposed method is tested in two experiments with two other benchmarks. Finally, we apply it to practical data of the Nanning-Guangzhou high-speed railway line. Public Library of Science 2020-04-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7173790/ /pubmed/32315337 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231706 Text en © 2020 Yuan, Nie http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Yuan, Wuyang
Nie, Lei
Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title_full Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title_fullStr Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title_full_unstemmed Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title_short Optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: An application of railway revenue management in China
title_sort optimization of seat allocation with fixed prices: an application of railway revenue management in china
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7173790/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32315337
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231706
work_keys_str_mv AT yuanwuyang optimizationofseatallocationwithfixedpricesanapplicationofrailwayrevenuemanagementinchina
AT nielei optimizationofseatallocationwithfixedpricesanapplicationofrailwayrevenuemanagementinchina