A co-evolutionary matheuristic for the car rental capacity-pricing stochastic problem

Abstract

When planning a selling season, a car rental company must decide on the number and type of vehicles in the fleet to meet demand. The demand for the rental products is uncertain and highly price-sensitive, and thus capacity and pricing decisions are interconnected. Moreover, since the products are rentals, capacity “returns”. This creates a link between capacity with fleet deployment and other tools that allow the company to meet demand, such as upgrades, transferring vehicles between locations or temporarily leasing additional vehicles. We propose a methodology that aims to support decision-makers with different risk profiles plan a season, providing good solutions and outlining their abilit..