SKEMA Sophia Antipolis, March 17: students of MSc Events and MSc Tourism Management were taught yield management by Serge Chamelian: managing partner of H-Hotelier, a company providing revenue management / yield management services to hotels. He presented a detailed examination of how different businesses use revenue management to maximize returns.
 
Yield management (YM) involves flexible pricing, used for services characterized by fixed costs, certain inactivity of proposed capacity, and market segmentation. Taking the example of a hotel room, YM means varying its price according to demand and to the kind of clients. YM is a harmonization of supply and demand and a rational method for price calculation, which leads to the satisfaction of customers as well as company profit.

To apply YM, a company needs to offer goods and services like hotel rooms, reunion halls, seats in a plane, tours at the museum, etc.

“I do not believe in giving home-work,” announced Chamelian at the beginning of the session. Instead, students were given test quizzes to answer after every session, creating a level of excitement among students and some laughs too: students asked cheekily: “Will you be asking this in the quiz later?”

Mathias, a participating student said afterwards: “I really like this way of teaching. Also, the concepts that I have learned are really valuable”.
 
Chamelian invited Jad Aboukhater, revenue manager of InterContinental Carlton Cannes, to one of the sessions.

“The session with the revenue manager of InterContinental was scheduled after those with Serge Chamelian who had laid the groundwork. So we were able to ask the InterContinental manager specific questions related to the concepts previously presented by Serge. We learned how those concepts are practically implemented”, said Taigo, a student.

Aboukhater commented afterwards on SKEMA’s MSc students: “It is really interesting to meet such a multicultural group of students, and I appreciate their level of involvement”.

The session ended by an invitation offered by Mr Jad Aboukhater to the students to come and visit the InterContinental Carlton Cannes.