Most conversations about artificial intelligence in revenue management eventually
circle the same question: what will be automated?
It is a reasonable place to start. For decades, progress in this field has meant faster
calculations, larger datasets, and systems that shoulder work once done by hand.
But that framing misses the more interesting shift.
What AI seems to be changing is not whether revenue managers are needed, but what,
precisely, they are needed for. I’ve come to think this shift is already underway … we
just haven’t named it yet…
Some domains lend themselves naturally to verification.
Arithmetic does. If two plus two equals four, it equals four every time. Chess, though
vastly more complex, still resolves cleanly: the king is either in checkmate or it is not.
Many engineering problems behave similarly. Code compiles or it throws an error.
Revenue management does not offer this kind of closure.
When a rate is adjusted for a holiday weekend, the outcome arrives slowly, and only
once. Bookings accumulate. Cancellations appear. A final occupancy number settles
into place.
What never materializes is the counterfactual. What could have happened.
We do not see, side by side, the weekend that would have occurred had the price been
five dollars higher. Or ten dollars lower. Or … GASP! … left untouched.
Instead, we work with shadows of comparison: last year’s performance, a competitive
set that is never truly comparable, a forecast built on assumptions that were already
imperfect when they were made.
In this environment, there is rarely a single right answer. There are only better and
worse judgments, visible in hindsight and debated in the present. As John deRoulet so
kindly put it, “being a revenue manager is just second guessing yourself until you have
an existential crisis.”
This ambiguity poses a challenge for artificial intelligence. It also poses the same
challenge for humans.
A model can surface patterns, propose adjustments, and articulate tradeoffs. It can do
so at speeds that would have been unimaginable only a few years ago. But it cannot tell
us, with certainty, which recommendation is correct. Because in revenue management,
correctness is not something the world reveals cleanly.
It is something we infer.
And inference, by definition, lives in the realm of judgment.
Jordan Locke, fellow RevProf Co-Founder, recently published the above article for our quarterly newsletter. Why would we choose this particular article to anchor our most recent newsletter?
Well, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (which, given certain circumstances, I’m
not saying is a bad thing), you’ve likely been accosted with all things AI. If you’re a
revenue manager, that attack has taken the form of debates over whether when we’ll be
replaced, and hidden just beneath that, our relevance/value in the pace. Let’s just say,
“AI” is the hot topic these days, and we don’t believe it’s going away any time soon.
This is exactly what we’re tackling in RevProf’s upcoming webinar: Humans + Tech:
The Next Frontier of Revenue Management. This isn’t a surface-level conversation
about how “AI is coming.” It’s a practical, forward-looking discussion about what actually changes, and what doesn’t.
We’ve brought together a panel of leaders, moderated by John An, who are actively
shaping the tools and systems that revenue managers use every day (i.e., These
people aren’t theorists; they’re actually building the future of revenue management in
real time):
Pedro Borges (PriceLabs)
Gerard Murphy (Beyond)
Andrew Kitchell (Wheelhouse)
This session is designed to challenge how revenue managers think about their role
(now) and where it’s heading.
Is full displacement realistic, or are we misunderstanding what automation is best
at?
If AI handles execution, what replaces that layer of work in a revenue manager’s
role?
What does a day in the life of a revenue manager look like when “pushing rates”
isn’t the core function (spoiler alert: it never was)?
What will the role look like in 2030 and beyond, and what skills will actually
matter?
If we at RevProf really thought we were standing at the precipice of irrelevance, we
wouldn’t be hosting this webinar (let alone putting together an association of brilliant
professionals). For us as a community, we believe the biggest risk right now isn’t that AI
replaces revenue managers, but that revenue managers fail to evolve alongside it.
We’re already seeing the shift:
From execution to interpretation
From reaction to anticipation
From pricing to holistic strategy (distribution, positioning, product, and demand
shaping)
The tools will continue to improve. That’s a given (especially w/ leaders in place like the
ones on our panel). The question is whether we, as revenue managers, reposition
ourselves as the people who guide the system, or remain the ones who are gradually
replaced by it.
We hope you’ll join us for the webinar:
Open to ALL
April 15, 2026
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM PT | 12:00 PM – 12:30 PM ET
Register here
And if you’re not already a member of RevProf, we hope you’ll consider joining our
movement!
