Yield management has received widespread recognition for its role in maximising the revenue yield from service operations. In 1996 the ยฎrst annual conference on yield management took place, which provided academics and industrialists from the services sector with the opportunity to share their experiences of, and views on, yield management. Following the success of this endeavour, Ian Yeoman (Napier University) and Tony Ingold (Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies) co-ordinated the second yield management conference, which was held in parallel with the Operations Research (OR) Society conference at Bath University in September 1997. Given that yield management was being featured for the ยฎrst time as a stream at the OR conference, it attracted the interest of delegates from a wide range of service organisations, in addition to those from the airline and hotel sectors with which yield management is generally associated. The broad audience was also reยฏected in the attendance by delegates from Europe, North America and Australasia. The combination of both these factors culminated in the lively debate and discussion that followed the various paper sessions.
The overall theme for the conference was `putting theory into practice' and the range of papers presented reยฏected that.