New transport and strategy bulletin

Frontier's new transport and strategy bulletin, Advanced booking, examines the ways in which the "yield management" pricing strategies developed by airlines could be more widely employed by passenger rail operators. Recent changes in the SRA's fares policy, and the prospect of further regulatory change in the next few years, could provide new opportunities and additional rewards for companies developing fares strategies in this way.Starting with the economic principles that underpin these techniques, we outline a framework for developing pricing strategies, identify some key dimensions for fare design and describe several of the analytical techniques that can help to optimise pricing. Since understanding how customers respond to different fare structures offers is central to optimising pricing strategies, the process is an evolutionary one in which investment on even a limited scale can pay dividends in the future.