Intelligent sleeping car berth inventory control system in the case of variable capacity of railcars

Managing ticket reservations in passenger rail transport is a complex task. A hybrid algorithm is developed as a decision support tool. The aim of the proposed algorithm is to provide real-time decisions on seat inventory allocation taking into account relevant information from the past. This paper considers the revenue management application in passenger rail transport with variable capacity of sleeping cars. Uncertainty of capacity availability is embedded in the developed algorithm through a payoff table, while an Artificial Neural Network is used as a tool for making real-time decisions. The algorithm is tested on hypothetical data.

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