An Itchy Nose Must Be Scratched

What are you saying? You haven't seen Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning yet? Well, what are you waiting for, go and download it!

It's a really, really good Star Trek/Babylon 5 parody, made by a couple of Finnish dudes in their living room over the course of 7 years. If there ever was a time for patriotic feelings, it's now.

Sometimes having too much free time on your hands produce bad home videos of young men jumping from rooftops, sometimes feature-length films of young men conquering a galaxy. And producing headline-worthy quotes as they go along.

But onwards to the important stuff. I think I may have had a heart attack today. I went to the hair dresser (funny how every time I come home from Asta's tender care I swear my hair has never been this short. Now I mean it. It's shorter than ever before) and for one horrible moment, after she had blow dried my hair and before she got her hands on a jar of gel I swear I looked exactly like princess Diana on her wedding photo. Except that I'm not a stylish, tall blonde. But all's well that ends well as they say, I'm back to being a redhead and the conservative enough for customer service but easily made suitable for heavy metal gigs-look is still there.

She has a way with hair, I must say. She puts her fingers on people's heads and feels the shape of their minds or something, but I've never (despite that 5-second Di moment) walked out of there wanting to wear a paper bag on my head.

Speaking of minds, remember many a post back I complained how studying yield management was boring? How, according to the book, managers in charge of the company's pricing decisions had to work in a chaos vacuum, hopefully wearing protective clothing, or something just as sensible? Anyways, I have just discovered that something of that course actually stuck to my head.

The basic idea of yield management is that the product sold cannot be stored. If a hotel room is empty for a night or a plane seat remains unreserved, it cannot be sold the next day. It still shows on the company's balance sheet, however; despite the product being unused it nevertheless has created costs - the hotel room must be heated, it needs electricity and so forth. The empty plane seat means no compensation for the gasoline (I so want to use the word Benzin here) used.

Ergo, the product must be sold. This is where it gets complicated. The mangers need to have exact and reliable statistics of low and high seasons, customer base, competition and so forth. Also, they need one helluva good event calendar.

Come the high season, there's no point in offering cut prices, you charge the customers rack prices or higher. Come low season, drop the prices and throw in some interesting extra offer to lure the unwary into your hotel/plane. What I found interesting was how you can control the customers with pricing. You see, the high and low seasons can happen during one week. If you've seen any "Book three nights - get 15% off. Valid only Mon-Thu" offers, you've seen yield management in practice. If the hotel is full booked only 2 or 3 nights a week, that's how they can try to even out the highest peaks to the slower nights - and not risk losing customers as they seek out other options. The airline companies are even more insane with their pricing decisions, the prices can change many times during one day.

So, basically, even if it seems that the evil big corporations use us as they please, with some forward planning and few thoughts put into it, you can get some pretty goddamn good deals out there.

And now that I've got you all numb and bored, here's what got me into thinking all this: Ratestogo hotel booking service I bumped into while looking for what Berlin has to offer in the hotel department. Hotel manager sees that there'll be an x amount of unoccupied rooms and that it looks like they won't fetch the full price, and updates this info to the hotel service site (I don't know how they do it, I'm making this up as I go along just for the suspense and to appear clever) and a tourist seeking accommodation sees the offer, and lo! An understanding is reached and everybody are happy.

Soundtrack while blogging:
Laibach: Tanz mit Laibach
Itä-Saksa: Guten Tag
Peer Günt: Southbound Drivin' Man