Pricing for Internet Sales Channels in Car Rentals

Abstract

Internet sales channels, especially e-brokers that compare prices in the market, have a major impact on car rentals. As costs are heavily correlated with unoccupied fleet, occupation considerations should be integrated with swift responses to the market prices. This work was developed alongside Guerin, a Portuguese car rental, to build a tool that quickly updates prices on e-brokers websites to increase total value. This paper describes the specificities of the problem and their implication on the solution, and presents an adaptative heuristic to update prices and the system’s architecture.