Research On Container Multimodal Transport Slot Allocation Based On Revenue Management

With the development of container shipping industry and the improvement of information technology, the multimodal transportation becomes possible and popular. Meanwhile, the competition in the market is so intense because of oversupply that the company has to use some effective way to manage the resource and revenue. It is an important way to manage the multimodal transportation company based on revenue management. Revenue management is to sell the right product/service to the right customer on the right time with the right price to maximize the revenue.With the analysis of researches done at home and abroad, this paper analyses whether the application of revenue management is suitable and essential according to the characteristics of multimodal transportation and the condition of applying the revenue management. According to features of intermodal transport, with the actual situation, this paper first analyses the segments of the market demand and uses the as differential pricing strategy, then build a multi-node intermodal slot allocation optimization model with free distribution agreements into two stages. The application of deterministic and stochastic programming method is used to solve linear programming problems, and finally uses sea-rail joint operational cases for analysis. As conclusion, the results of the case study show that the revenue management method is applicable and can bring profit for the container multimodal transportation company. At last, this paper provides the company some advice about the application of revenue management in multimodal transport company.