Media Coverage

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.

INFORMS member Arden Baxter has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowships (GRF) by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Baxter, a PhD student with Georgia Tech's H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) received one of only four grants given by the NSF in the industrial engineering/operations research category. Baxter, who has a bachelor’s degree from Rollins College in math and computer science, is advised by William W. George Chair and Professor Pinar Keskinocak, who also directs the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems, and is an INFORMS Fellow and the INFORMS President-Elect.

The world is awash in data, and police departments are no exception. Now, they are beginning to make better use of that data. Police departments are starting to use machine learning and layering on artificial intelligence to make smarter, more informed policing decisions. Although the technology is still in its infancy, public safety agencies like the New York Police Department see significant potential in pattern recognition algorithms, AI and the ability to turn unstructured data into structured data that supports and informs police work.