Operational research and tourism applications

Operational Research, or Operations Research as they call it in USA, may be used for improving any business process, even within the services industries. One of the major sectors damaged by the economic crisis has been tourism. This is a complex sector which comprises from transportation (i.e. airlines), to the accommodation industry, restaurants and cafés, and the leisure related services such as theme parks, museums, and the like. Not to mention the tour operators and travel agents, which act as tourism supply aggregators.

Hopefully, OR may give the tourism sector a hand by enhancing the data availability, applying several scientific methodologies and the usage of IT & systems. Both private tourism companies and the public sector, which supports the tourism industry, may embrace several solutions ‘The Science of Better’ lends us:

• Demand Market Research and Forecasting
• Market Segmentation and Destination Matching
• Consumer Perception Analysis
• Destination Benchmarking and best practices
• Pricing and Revenue Management
• Value Chain, Network, and Individual Productivity Analysis
• Event Scheduling
• Airline Passenger Congestion Problem
• …

The list is intensive rather than extensive, and surely every economic agent from the tourism sector will have its own set of solutions addressed to optimise its resources. However, sometimes is as easy as setting up and use a simple spreadsheet with the solver tool. Are you interested in solving your problems?