Research On Pricing Strategies Of Hotel's Online Booking Contracts

In recent years,with the development of the national economy and the improvement of people's income level,the domestic tourism industry has become more and more developed.At the same time,the continuous popularization of the Internet has made e-commerce in the tourism industry developing rapidly.And the online reservation system(ORS)has been widely used already in hospitality industry,and pricing problems on different online booking contracts have become an important part of hotel revenue management.Based on this background,this thesis will study the pricing problems on two types of online booking contracts-"online prepayment"and "shop to pay" of both budget hotels and star hotels.First of all,this thesis explores how to maximize budget hotel's profit by reasonably pricing on "online prepayment" and "shop to pay" facing customers with different price-sensitivities and arrival probabilities in circumstances of unlimited and limited room capacity.The study finds that the budget hotel can design three different pricing strategies for two types of online booking contracts,and segment customers having different average probabilities of arrival through appropriate pricing.In addition,when room capacity is very small,the budget hotel tends to provide only the"shop to pay" contract;when the capacity is large,the hotel tends to take differentiated pricing strategy.Then,this thesis studies star hotel's pricing problems of two types of online booking contracts considering that customers of star hotels pay more attention to service.The study finds that when star hotel's customers have different basic service requirements on the two types of contracts,the hotel will have an acceptable highest level of customer service requirements on the "shop to pay" contract.When customer's basic requirement is lower than that level,the hotel tends to use two contracts to differentiate between customers who have different arrival probabilities;when basic requirement is above that level,the hotel only provides "online prepayment" contract.And when room capacity is small enough,the star hotel tends to take a special pricing strategy-only provide the "shop to pay" contract.In conclusion,this thesis provides a reference proposal for different types of hotels in specific pricing decision-making and also enriches current domestic theoretical research on hotel online booking market as well as provides a new way of thinking and a new direction for further research.