Revenue Management approach to car rental business : Revenue Management guide for Helkama Rent Ltd

The purpose of this product-oriented thesis is to study revenue management as a business practise and and create a Revenue Management guide for the assigning company Helkama Rent Ltd car rental. The guide is supposed to give ideas and a structure for Revenue Management in Helkama Rent Ltd. Helkama Rent Ltd has been struggling with the profitability issues recently. Revenue Management guide will help Helkama Rent to obtain Revenue Management philosophy, and give ideas and tools for more efficient and effective revenue generation. The guide will demonstrate how to execute simple Revenue Management at the downtown location.\n\nThe guide will consist of Revenue Management process cycle and the detailed descriptions of each process steps. Process steps are demonstrated from the Downtown location point of view yet they provide insight for other locations as well. This thesis project started in late August 2013, and the theoretical framework was written first during September-October 2013. The planning of the actual outcome (Revenue Management guide) started at the same time but the sharpened outcome was finalized in late October. After thorough theory part and data processing, the actual writing of Revenue Management guide began. \n\nFor the starting situation, Helkama Rent employees responsible for Revenue Management related operations were consulted by interviewing the Budget Brand Champion and the Downtown location’s Station Manager. Numerous raw reports from the reservation system (Wizard) were processed and analyzed in order to build the Revenue Management guide.\n\nAccording to the feedback received from Helkama Rent Ltd, the Revenue Management guide was perceived valuable since it provides comprehensive background and valuable ideas for Revenue Management. The guide can be seen more as the first step towards comprehensive Revenue Management than a thorough Revenue Management strategy for Helkama Rent Ltd.