Patent ID: 7343338
Filing Date: 2008-03-11
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A computerized bidding method for matching hospitality facility data, representing vendors furnishing hotel facilities, meeting room facilities or other hospitality facilities, with requirement data, representing respective necessities of a plurality of meeting planners for a corresponding plurality of meetings or events, said bidding and matching method utilizing a client-server network with at least one server and a plurality of client computer systems, the method comprising the steps of: as a computerized method: storing said hospitality facility data and said requirement data in a database on said at least one server, said hospitality facility data at least including vendor contact data, room quantity data and amenity data; gathering requirement offer data and planner contact data from said plurality of meeting planners, the gathered requirement offer data including facilities requirements data; matching requirement offer data with said hospitality facility data; presenting blinded requirement data, without revealing the identity of the corresponding meeting planner who supplied said requirement offer data, to vendors associated with said hospitality facility data which match said facilities requirements data; gathering specific hospitality facility data from said vendors relative to said presented blinded requirement data including price data; presenting, to said corresponding meeting planner who supplied said requirement data, blinded specific hospitality facility data responsive to said requirement offer data; permitting said corresponding meeting planner to select blinded specific hospitality facility data from a predetermined number of vendors; enabling direct communications with the exchange of vendor and planner contact data between said predetermined number of vendors and said corresponding meeting planner supplying said requirement offer data; in the event said corresponding meeting planner cannot fulfill necessities corresponding to said requirement offer data, repeating the permitting selection step while excluding at least one of said predetermined number of vendors and repeating the enabling communications step; gathering facilities offer data, representing at least one offer by a vendor to supply hospitality facilities, and storing said facilities offer data in said database, said facilities offer data including at least a hospitality facility feature and facility offer price data; presenting blinded facilities offer data to one or more meeting planners; gathering specific facilities requirement data from a plurality of responsive meeting planners relative to said facilities offer data; presenting, to said at least one vendor supplying said facilities offer data, blinded specific requirement data; permitting said at least one vendor to select blinded specific requirement data representing a further predetermined number of said responsive meeting planners, enabling direct communications with the exchange of planner contact data between said further predetermined number of said responsive meeting planners and vendor contact data of said at least one vendor supplying said facilities offer data and, in the event said at least one vendor cannot fulfill the corresponding offer to supply hospitality facilities, repeating said permitting selection step and presenting said blinded facilities offer data step to said one vendor while excluding at least one of said further predetermined number of responsive meeting planners and repeating the enabling of communications step between said meeting planners and said one vendor.