Looking back at the early
90’s car rental booking systems one may easily realize the dramatic changes
that have occurred based on the increased needs of our days. A pricing engine
of a system in the early 90s differs enormously compared to the pricing engine
a system that is developed to face our times competitive environment.
In the 90’s the average
car rental company had mainly three season rates, e.g. Low, Mid and High and
these rates could be applied to a number of agents and were valid for an entire
year.
The explosive evolution of
the internet, the huge increase of people using the internet since the last
decade came to change the rules of the game. Suddenly there was an explosive
increase of users booking their car rentals through the web. They could find
more attractive prices for a car rental online. Car rental brokers had to modify their systems
or die. Car rental companies had to start playing the match on a new ground –
the Web. The game in this ground demanded a new way of thinking when it comes
to pricing.
Building the pricing
engine of our car rental software, Carhire
Manager Web was one of the most challenging tasks in the entire project. We
had set the following basic requirements.
- Creating new rates had to be quick and
innovative
- Rate modification had to be an instant process
- The engine had to be extremely flexible in
increasing or decreasing prices any time covering all possible
- It
should be very clear which rates were applied to each agent
- All the above should be possible with a minimum
need of data entry.
When a user creates a new
rate in Carhire Manager Web the
system prompts the user to enter a name for the rate, number of seasons and
number of scales.
Pressing the Create button redirects the user to a screen that reminds a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The user is now required to define
·
from date
and to date . These two dates are referring
to the submission period of the booking
·
from date
and to date . These two dates are
referring to the actual rental period of the booking
The next step is to either
enter the prices in this screen or just export the content to Microsoft Excel and do all necessary
work and then import the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet back into Carhire Manager Web. The ability of
exporting to and importing from Microsoft
Excel provides a big amount of flexibility since the user may do all
necessary calculations and recalculations using formulas, examining margins in
order to decide the pricing. When ready the only thing that is required is a button
click in order to import the result of this work back to the system.
A rate can then be applied
to one or many agents. The agents and their assigned rates maybe viewed in a
tree view styled screen.
For each agent we may
define
- Early
bird discounts -
Discounts for early bookers (one or many)
- Flexible
Rates - Increased or decreased rates/ special
offers (one or many)
- Commissions – Commission payable to agent (one or many)
- Free
days – Free days offers (one
or many)
Remember that a certain
rate may be used by several agents but for every specific agent we may have
different early bird discounts, different
flexible rates ( offers ), commissions
or free days. Hence this eliminates the need of creating constantly new
rates. Please note that an agent using a specific rate may have a number of
Early birds discounts or flexible rates assigned.
The pricing
engine for a car rental software is like the heart for a body. It is
not my intention to go further into details and analyze the pricing engine
because my aim was just to show the basic concept of the pricing engine of Carhire Manager Web. This model provides an overall flexibility
over the rate system and enables the car rental company to handle rates with
extreme ease and to be highly competitive.
Andreas Michael
Carhire Manager Web http://www.carhiremanagerweb.com/
Datalogic Consultants http://www.datalogicco.com
