Scientific journal paper Q2
Predicting hotel booking cancellations to decrease uncertainty and increase revenue
Nuno António (Antonio, N.); Ana de Almeida (de Almeida, A.); Luís Nunes (Nunes, L.);
Journal Title
Tourism and Management Studies
Year (definitive publication)
2017
Language
Portuguese
Country
Portugal
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Times Cited: 51

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Times Cited: 116

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Alternative Titles

(Portuguese) Previsão de cancelamentos de reservas de hotéis para diminuir a incerteza e aumentar a receita

Abstract
Booking cancellations have a substantial impact in demand-management decisions in the hospitality industry. Cancellations limit the production of accurate forecasts, a critical tool in terms of revenue management performance. To circumvent the problems caused by booking cancellations, hotels implement rigid cancellation policies and overbooking strategies, which can also have a negative influence on revenue and reputation. Using data sets from four resort hotels and addressing booking cancellation prediction as a classification problem in the scope of data science, authors demonstrate that it is possible to build models for predicting booking cancellations with accuracy results in excess of 90%. This demonstrates that despite what was assumed by Morales and Wang (2010) it is possible to predict with high accuracy whether a booking will be canceled. Results allow hotel managers to accurately predict net demand and build better forecasts, improve cancellation policies, define better overbooking tactics and thus use more assertive pricing and inventory allocation strategies.
Acknowledgements
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Keywords
Data science,Hospitality industry,Machine learning,Predictive modeling,Revenue management
  • Computer and Information Sciences - Natural Sciences
  • Other Social Sciences - Social Sciences
Funding Records
Funding Reference Funding Entity
UID/MULTI/0446/2013 Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia