Rostering-Integrated Services and Crew Efficiency

Tourism is a service-intensive industry that is characterized by a highly competitive market. The adequate utilization of personnel provides the key means of tackling two conflicting tendencies: on the one hand, the consumers’ expections of a certain level of service quality; on the other, the expense usually associated with qualified human labor. Our paper presents (1) how the quality level of services can be augmented and (2) how the workforce can be used efficiently by extending a basic model through adequate constraints. All of the proposed supplementary services do not require additional personnel; rather, they imply certain extensions to the traditional crew rostering procedure. However, because these supplementary services do tighten the crew rostering problem, we also propose a means for levelling out these restrictions by raising the probability that a feasible solution exists: namely, downgrading and minimum crew flights. The application of the extended SWIFTROSTER algorithm to a numerical example is provided to substantiate the utility of language-oriented crew assignment and the downgrading concept.