A Stochastic Analysis of Alternate Ways of Scheduling Transport for Tourists

A firm providing transport to tourists can do so at fixed points in time (scheduling by time). Alternately, it can wait for a certain minimal number of tourists to arrive before it provides transport (scheduling by numbers). This “how to schedule” problem confronts all providers of transport to tourists. Yet, this problem has received scant theoretical attention in the literature. Hence, we conduct a stochastic analysis of this problem in our paper. We first describe a model that accounts for the common features of sightseeing trips to a particular tourist attraction. Second, we analyze the provision of transport when our firm schedules by time. Third, we study the provision of transport when our firm schedules by numbers. Fourth, we discuss the implications of our findings. Finally, we conclude and then make suggestions for extending the analysis in this paper