SIMULATING DIFFERENT LEVELS OF CAR CLASS UPGRADES IN A CAR RENTAL COMPANY’S OPERATIONS

摘要

The car rental business has experienced recent growth under a fiercely competitive market. This paper describes a generic discrete event simulation tool for studying the complex nature of a car rental company's operations. To construct the tool, we conducted several interviews with experts to first establish the proper requirements, after which we collected relevant data for populating the simulation model, thereby determining the best strategies for car class pricing and upgrade offers that would result in the highest revenue. A realistic case study was conducted to assess the tool and gain a better understanding of the underlying system. Finally, simulation experiments regarding rental prices and car upgrades were designed, and the system was run, achieving a 0.5% error for various performance criteria. For the given case, we found that two upgrade offers and setting prices slightly higher than the average customer budget provides the best strategy.