room is not sold for less than Y (hotels do this to prevent wholesalers from competing with themselves). With dynamic packaging, the customer is not presented with the room price, only the overall package price, so hotels typically allow the wholesaler to discount the (hidden) price of the hotel more. Opaque pricing also has benefits for airlines. Airlines tend to increase their fares the closer you get to the departure date, even if there are many available seats. This is to "train" the consumers to book early, making it easier for the airline to do proper revenue management. If airlines were to dump their fares if a flight failed to fill up, then this would train the customers to wait until very close to departure before booking. This would make it virtually impossible for an airline to manage their fares (fares could then only be determined based on historical data and not based on current demand). Dynamic packaging allows an airline to get rid of distressed inventory at discounted fares, as the discounted fare is effectively hidden from the consumer. Preconditions Dynamic Packaging is also often misunderstood since it requires that the provider of Dynamic Packaging be a wholesaler, who must also issue tickets, vouchers or other redeemable coupons in order to become a Dynamic Packager. Without an inventory management system, and a ticket, coupon or voucher issuing system to make the prices of the individual components appear as one price to the consumer and allow each travel service provider to know what rate to accept or charge the traveler; dynamic packaging does not work. Many travel retailers have mistakenly assumed they could provide dynamic packaging without an inventory management system, mark-up engine with business rules and a ticket issuing and resolution system. The wholesaler must either directly control the inventory that is combined into packages or buy the package components up-front from other travel suppliers. This implies that dynamic packages (as with static packages) are always pre-paid by the customer. The wholesaler would typically also require special discounted fares/rates from the travel suppliers. For car rental, the supplier (car rental company or intermediary) should ideally supply their price based on calendar days rather than hour-by-hour. Calendar day rates reduce the number of vehicle availability/pricing scans the wholesaler must make. For packages that include flights, the outbound arrival and return departure date/times determine the car rental pick-up and drop-off date/times.