Manage Your Prices

How do airlines, hotels, resorts and other organisations manage their prices? Why are these prices apparently unrelated to costs and different for each consumer? And what is the underlying logic and strategy behind these prices?

This free online course will open the black box of revenue management – the widespread pricing strategy that the travel, leisure and other industries use to generate additional revenue, by setting prices according to people’s preferences and willingness to pay.

You will explore the methods at the core of many revenue management systems, discovering the answers to questions such as:

• Do all customers have the same sensitivity to price?
• How can a firm use its knowledge on demand, to charge different people different prices for the same product?
• Why do the prices vary over time?
• How can a firm slightly differentiate its product in order to charge widely different prices to different people?
• How can you define the right set of prices to increase the firm’s profit?
• What is the outcome for the individual consumer? And for consumers as a whole?

Throughout the course you will practice what you learn through practical pricing problems, pricing simulation games and interactive case studies. For example, you will step into the shoes of a pricer and set an airline’s pricing strategy over a period of time.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of pricing strategies;
• Compare and evaluate different pricing schemes in different sectors of industry;
• Design a pricing framework in a real-life revenue optimisation situation;
• Implement revenue management in your business, and experiment with price setting and capacity allocation.

The course has been developed by ENAC (Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile) – a university specialising in the economics and strategy of the aviation industry, where revenue management originated.

Throughout, ENAC educators will also be joined by experts from other sectors that are successfully using revenue management techniques, giving you a variety of perspective and experiences.