Optimal Booking Limit Decision in the Presence of Strategic Customer Behavior

We consider a two-period airline revenue management problem where customers may act strategically. Specifically, we study a two-fare-class airline seat inventory allocation problem which allow for the possibility that a customer may decide to defer to purchase in the hope that a cheaper ticket than those currently on offer (expensive tickets) become available. We also allow for the possibility that some customer will buy a more expensive ticket if the cheaper tickets are not available. We show how to find the optimal booking limits in the presence of such strategic customer behavior and investigate the impact of such strategic customer behavior on the expected revenue. The results are compared with those by the expected marginal seat revenue (EMSR) heuristic approach (Belobaba, 1987, 1989) with strategic customer behavior.