Revenue Guru

Anthony LoPinto

With the leverage of real-time digital platforms and moment-to-moment connectivity to market moves and customer trends, the era of the Revenue Guru, or otherwise known as the Chief Revenue Officer, is emerging across every customer-facing industry. Pricing adjustments for goods and services have been around for a long time. Post-Christmas sales, end of season markdowns, and peak airline pricing for high travel times around holidays or discounts for low-travel periods has been around for a long time. However, now the pricing game is focused on minute-to-minute trends. Hotels and airlines are aggressively leading the trend dialing pricing up or down based on real-time demand and observable trends.

I recently reviewed pricing for a trip to Dallas and found a Coach “Comfort” (not really but that’s what they call it), for $780 round-trip. I closed out of Delta’s website to take care of something else and returned in about 15 minutes. A $780 fare was nowhere to be found, and the price was now $890!  Delta’s version of Watson is lurking in the background dialing pricing based on algorithms to predict demand, enabling pricing to the moment.