The era of convergence in revenue management

Airlines deploy multiple strategies and channels for revenue generation with varying underlying costs. Current revenue management systems focus predominantly on revenue maximisation for a given capacity, sales force focuses on market share and the accountants on cost of sale and profits. With the growing pressure on margins, there is a compelling need to converge the various revenue earning opportunities along with their associated costs through an enterprise-wide uniform methodology for deciding on airline inventory allocation to maximise profits. These methodologies have to embrace a significantly longer time horizon than what is prevalent in today's practices.