Media Coverage

The increasing number of travelers choosing to fly, especially during the travel heavy summer season, has lead to longer lines at airport security, even for TSA PreCheck passengers. Sheldon Jacobson, INFORMS Fellow and Founder Professor in Computer Science in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discusses how the TSA can better utilize the guidelines and procedures established by the PreCheck, and encourage more travelers to enroll, to accommodate new changes in airport security and increase screening effectiveness.

As the amount of content and advertising exponentially increases, product placement can still be an effective way to reach consumers. According to new research from the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, verbal product placements have the most success at driving online engagement around a brand. Luxury brands including BMW, Land Rover and Shangri-La have previously used product placement in television and film to get consumers' attention.

Since the introduction of sharing-economy services such as Airbnb, hotels have struggled with how to compete against the alternative accommodations market. Among hotels’ concerns is how Airbnb impacts their pricing and distribution strategies, which, according to new research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, might be more dramatic than hoteliers may think.

It comes as no surprise that Airbnb steals business from hotels, but a new research paper published last month argued that the home-sharing platform also drives demand in a way that helps traditional hotels, especially during peak travel season. Professors from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon published a study last month in research journal Marketing Science that analyzed how Airbnb interacts with the hotel markets, and the conclusions were somewhat unexpected. 

The INFORMS Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) certification was named among the top seven data analytics certifications.