Revenue Management: How Pricing Models Shape Corporate Travel

Revenue management is how travel suppliers forecast demand, manage inventory and set prices using a variety of inputs. For corporate programs, it also can determine how negotiated rates or discounts show up in booking channels.   

Airline Revenue Management 

Airline revenue management uses historical demand patterns, booking behavior over time, seasonality and competitive context to forecast demand, control availability and set prices. 
 
Seat inventory is split into fare classes, and airlines use algorithms to determine how many seats to sell at each level—and when to open or close availability based on current bookings and forecasts. These decisions balance load factor with revenue per seat and are continuously adjusted. 

One recent change has been the rise of New Distribution Capability-enabled pricing models that go beyond EDIFACT fare-filing constraints. NDC also enables dynamic and continuous pricing. (See BTN's primer on continuous pricing.) 

Ancillary revenue—such as bags, seat selection, upgrades and other à la carte services—has become a core part of airline revenue management, with fees adjusting dynamically based on demand and traveler behavior.   

Use of artificial intelligence to support suppliers’ pricing decisions also is on the rise. Instead of relying solely on historical demand patterns, AI-enabled systems can evaluate a broader range of signals and generate price and inventory recommendations in real time, said Goldspring Consulting partner Neil Hammond.  

“While we have not yet seen or measured the full impact on the ability of the airlines to create personalized offers for travelers now that the airlines are becoming more aware of who is searching, we have seen and measured the impact of continuous pricing as the airline pricing capabilities have freed themselves from the EDIFACT protocol,” Hammond added.  

In addition, revenue management models can affect when and where airlines fly, Hammond said.  

Hotel Revenue Management 

Hotel revenue management uses many of the same forecasting and pricing methods as airlines, but the way hotels define and price inventory is changing.   

Hammond points to a shift toward attribute-based selling—not unlike the ancillaries airlines now charge for—where hotels move beyond broad categories like “standard” or “suite” and instead price rooms based on features travelers actually want, like view, layout or in-room extras. With attribute-based pricing, travelers can search for specific attributes with real-time availability, rather than clicking through each property individually.   

Implications for Corporate Buyers  

For buyers, the increasing control suppliers have over pricing and availability can mean less consistency—and less visibility—into how and when negotiated rates appear. Some programs have struggled to reconcile what travelers see in booking tools with what the contract says they should get. Global distribution system access to airline content has mostly evened out since the end of full-content agreements, but questions around transparency linger. 

Revenue management has changed how corporate programs negotiate, monitor and validate both air and hotel value. Buyers can no longer assume that a negotiated rate—static or dynamic—will reliably show up in every channel. Differences in distribution technology and channel content mean a corporate fare or rate may appear in one place but not in another, Hammond said.  

As pricing becomes more fluid and personalized, industry representatives are voicing concerns about how much control buyers retain over how their negotiated rates appear. At the Global Business Travel Association convention in July, Advito managing director and BCD Travel SVP April Bridgeman stressed that buyers should keep a close watch on their air contracts as travel patterns shift, market conditions change, and airlines roll out new tools like NDC or Fetcherr. She warned that AI-driven pricing could make program management more challenging.  

"It does make things less transparent and predictable and less measurable for travel managers," she said.   

Travlr ID founder Gee Mann pointed to research suggesting that AI bots trained to compete on pricing can unintentionally begin coordinating their behavior, settling on similar price levels to avoid volatility. He said this possibility makes transparency and clear audit trails important. 

That tension—greater efficiency for suppliers, less predictability for buyers—is becoming a defining challenge as AI transforms revenue management.  

“Some airlines [are] questioning whether or not to participate in the managed travel marketplace. Realignment of the booking-class model to a service-class model, increased [volume] thresholds for the buyers in some cases, and a clear tier structure is emerging,” Hammond said. 

For travel managers, the signal is clear: The rules of engagement are changing, and buyers will have to adapt as suppliers revenue manage and redraw the boundaries of the corporate travel landscape.