Generic Model Base Design for Decision Support Systems in Revenue Management: Applications to Hotel and Health Care Sectors - Efficient Decision Support Systems: Practice and Challenges from Current to Future - page 188

reservation of a plane seat through the web or through a travel agency), and the
combination of channel and infrastructure will define the types of value/ tariff that will be
offered. In this case, the tariff would not depend on the customer type. Complementing the
example, alternatively, the proposed model also encompasses another family of
optimization models, such as when customers are segmented according to their loyalty to
the company, and thus tariffs are in fact dependent on the customer segment.

4. Business process model

As stated in the hierarchy definition, the Business Process Model abstraction layer
corresponds to the business process models generated through direct instantiation from the
metamodel described in the former section.
We illustrate our proposal through a highly simplified model of a hotel room reservation
process. In this simplified process we consider only one Channel Type ( CH1 ) through which
the customers place their reservations for a unique type of room ( R1 ), which will be the only
Infrastructure Type in this case. Customers are segmented in two types depending on
whether they are only willing to make the reservation if they are offered a discounted price
( B ) or they are willing to pay the normal price ( A ; these customers would naturally also
accept the discounted price). Therefore, there are two pre-specified Value Types ( Discounted
and Full ) for each room. The business process designed by the hotel contemplates offering
rooms initially at a specially discounted price and at some point in time, switching the price
from Discounted to Full . The price will then remain Full for the rest of the time horizon. Table
1 shows the instances that would in this case form the business process according to the
proposed model. Generic Times T1 and T3 define the start and the end of the process to be
optimized. Generic Time T2 defines when the hotel switches from the Discounted price to the
Full price.

Channel
Type

Infrastructure
Type

Value
Type

Generic
End

Customer Segment Type Generic Start

A CH1 R1 Discounted T1 T2

A CH1 R1 Full T2 T3

B CH1 R1 Discounted T1 T2

Table 1. Example of room reservation business process model

5. Business process instance

The Business Process Instance is the third abstraction layer of the modeling hierarchy. This
layer stems from assigning values to the optimization parameters linked to each model
element. Optimization variables are signified by not having a value assigned in this layer.
This approach allows establishing a taxonomy of infrastructure allocation problems, based
on the set of parameters and variables that have been defined.
Taking the example of the former section, it is important to highlight that even such a simple
business model lends itself to several optimization approaches. Specifically, it could lead to
the following cases:
 Given the arrival rate for each customer type, the number of rooms to be offered, the

full and the discounted price and assuming that there are no channel access restrictions,
determine the optimal time T2 to maximize the hotel profit.