Patent Publication Number: US-2004049413-A1

Title: Apparatus, method, and computer program for reservation of accommodation

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0001] 1) Field of the Invention  
       [0002] The present invention relates to an apparatus, a method, and a computer program for reserving a desired room in a hotel or the like.  
       [0003] 2) Description of the Related Art  
       [0004] The Internet is being widely used for inquiring room availability and reserving a suitable room. Room reservation at a hotel can be done simply by accessing the homepage of the hotel and entering relevant details such as the period for which the guest wants to book a room, the room preference, the guest&#39;s name, and so on.  
       [0005] A travel agent&#39;s homepage usually has hotels listed region-wise, or links to homepages of various hotels. Many of these homepages even offer helpful information in the form of bulletin boards that display customer feedback of various hotels.  
       [0006] A similar service of taking care of hotel reservation for company personnel undertaking business travel is offered as one of its services by the corporate portal services of various business houses (see non-patent literature Momma, “Corporate Portal Service: B-Front”, Fujitsu, August 2002, Vol. 53, No. 4, p. 299-303). These portal services provide links to the homepages of various travel agents. The user can access these sites and make hotel reservation to suit his or her requirement.  
       [0007] However, most of the travel agents provide information that relates to tourist-oriented hotels. This poses a problem when looking for information that relates to business-centric hotels. For example, a business person would prefer a hotel that is close to the place of business because a hotel that is close to a tourist spot need not necessarily be convenient for the business stay.  
       [0008] This implies that the information regarding hotels provided by a travel agent should be segregated into two groups—tourist-oriented information and business-oriented information. However, the percentage of people who seek business-oriented information is far less than that of people who seek tourist-oriented information. Consequently, it usually does not make good financial sense for a travel agency to invest in developing an information system to cater to what is a minority group.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0009] It is an object of the present invention to solve at least the problems in the conventional technology.  
       [0010] The accommodation reservation apparatus according to one aspect of the present invention offers information about availability of a room in a hotel in response to a request by a user, and reserves the room selected by the user. The accommodation reservation apparatus comprises a feedback collecting unit that obtains from the user a feedback about an evaluation of the hotel or the room based on the user&#39;s previous personal experience at the hotel; and a room availability information providing unit that provides the user the feedback along with the information about availability of the room.  
       [0011] The method according to another aspect of the present invention is a method of offering information about availability of a room in a hotel in response to a request by a user, and reserving the room selected by the user. The method comprises collecting from the user a feedback about an evaluation of the hotel or the room based on the user&#39;s previous personal experience at the hotel; and providing the user the feedback along with the information about availability of the room.  
       [0012] The computer program according to still another aspect of the present invention realizes the method according to the present invention on a computer.  
       [0013] The other objects, features and advantages of the present invention are specifically set forth in or will become apparent from the following detailed descriptions of the invention when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. 
     
    
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
     [0014]FIG. 1 is a block diagram that shows the structure of an accommodation reservation system according to the present invention;  
     [0015]FIG. 2 shows sample contents of a favorites storing section;  
     [0016]FIG. 3 shows sample contents of a recommendation storing section;  
     [0017]FIG. 4 shows sample contents of a feedback storing section;  
     [0018]FIG. 5 shows sample contents of an employee information storing section;  
     [0019]FIG. 6 is a flowchart that explains an accommodation reservation process in the accommodation reservation server shown in FIG. 1;  
     [0020]FIG. 7 is a flowchart that explains the operations of the room availability inquiring section shown in FIG. 1;  
     [0021]FIG. 8 is a flowchart that explains the steps of available room list creating process shown in FIG. 7;  
     [0022]FIG. 9 is a flowchart that explains the operation of the reserving section shown in FIG. 1; and  
     [0023]FIG. 10 is a flowchart that explains the operation of the feedback collecting section shown in FIG. 1. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION  
     [0024] Exemplary embodiments of the present invention are described next with reference to the accompanying drawings.  
     [0025] The structure of an accommodation reservation system according to the present invention is explained next with reference to FIG. 1.  
     [0026] The accommodation reservation system comprises a portal server  100  and an accommodation reservation server  200  mutually connected via the Internet  40 . An internal client  10  is connected to the portal server  100  via the Internet  40 . An external client  20 , and a travel agent website  30  are connected to the accommodation reservation server  200  via the Internet  40 .  
     [0027] This accommodation reservation system is business travel-oriented and is actually a system built by adding a company employee personal feedback function to the general purpose accommodation reservation function offered by the travel agent website  30 .  
     [0028] The internal client  10  is a terminal via which the user accesses the accommodation reservation system using the Internet  40 . The internal client  10  can be a personal computer or a personal digital assistant (PDA) on which a web browser is installed.  
     [0029] The external client  20  is a terminal via which travel agency personnel or hotel personnel access the accommodation reservation system using the Internet  40 . The external client  20  is a personal computer on which a web browser is installed. This accommodation reservation system collects feedback on various hotels from business personnel and provides the feedback to the concerned travel agents and hotels. The travel agency personnel or the hotel personnel can obtain the feedback from the accommodation reservation system using the external client  20 .  
     [0030] The travel agent website  30  is a computer that the travel agency uses. Based on the request from the accommodation reservation system, the travel agent website  30  provides room availability information or carries out hotel booking.  
     [0031] For the sake of convenience, only one each of the internal client  10 , the external client  20 , the travel agent website  30 , and the portal server  100  are shown here. However, this accommodation reservation system allows any number of these machines to be connected.  
     [0032] The portal server  100  functions as a portal site for the company employee and relays hotel reservation related data from the internal client  10  to the accommodation reservation server  200  and vice versa. In other words, the portal server  100  receives data in HTML format from the internal client  10 , converts it to XML format and sends it to the accommodation reservation server  200 . Similarly, the portal server  100  receives data in XML format from the accommodation reservation server  200 , converts it to HTML format and sends it to the internal client  10 .  
     [0033] The accommodation reservation server  200  is a computer that receives an accommodation reservation request from the internal client via the portal server, and carries out accommodation reservation using the travel agent website  30 . The accommodation reservation server  200  also provides employee feedback information to the external client  20 .  
     [0034] The accommodation reservation server  200  comprises a controlling section  210  and a storage section  220 . The controlling section  210  carries out processes in response to request from the internal client  10  and the external client  20 . The controlling section  210  further comprises a favorites processing section  211 , a recommendation processing section  212 , a room availability inquiring section  213 , a reserving section  214 , a feedback collecting section  215 , a feedback providing section  216 , an XML/HTML converting section  217 , and an employee managing section  218 .  
     [0035] The storage section  220  stores data used by each of the sections in the controlling section  210 , and comprises a favorites storing section  221 , a recommendation storing section  222 , a feedback storing section  223 , and an employee information storing section  224 .  
     [0036] The favorites processing section  211  manages a list of favorite hotels from amongst the hotels at which the employees have stayed. The favorites processing section  211  stores hotels specified as favorites by employees in the favorites storing section  221  and searches the hotels stored in the favorites storing section  221  for hotels that satisfy specific criteria.  
     [0037] The recommendation processing section  212  manages, based on the employee feedback on hotels the employees have stayed at, a list of hotels that can be recommended to the employees. The recommendation processing section  212  stores the names of the recommended hotels in the recommendation storing section  222 , and searches the recommendation storing section  222  for hotels that satisfy specific criteria.  
     [0038] The employee-recommended hotels are further grouped into hotels based on feedback from all employees and hotels classified according to department-wise feedback. If there is a list of recommended hotels based on the feedback from the department the employee belongs to, the recommendation processing section  212  searches those hotels. If there are no recommended hotels based on the feedback from the department the employee belongs to, the recommendation processing section  212  searches the hotels recommended based on the feedback from all the employees.  
     [0039] In this manner, by managing the department-wise hotel lists, the recommendation processing section  212  enables an employee to look for hotels most suited to his or her requirements based on the feedback from other employees in his or her department.  
     [0040] The room availability inquiring section  213  inquires for room availability at the travel agent website  30  via the Internet  40 , and transmits to the portal server  100  the hotels at which rooms are available, along with the employees&#39; personal feedback of the hotels.  
     [0041] Further, if there is available feedback from other employees from the department to which the employee who is reserving a hotel belongs, only the feedback of the employees from that department are relayed. If there is no feedback from other employees from that department, the feedback of all the employees is relayed.  
     [0042] In this manner, by furnishing the department-wise employee feedback to the room availability inquiry result, the room availability inquiring section  213  enables an employee to select a hotel most suited to his or her requirements.  
     [0043] The reserving section  214  reserves a room in the hotel the employee selects based on the room availability inquiry result and carries out the actual reservation by requesting the travel agent website  30 .  
     [0044] The feedback collecting section  215  obtains feedback on hotels from the employees and stores the feedback in the feedback storing section  223 . In other words, the feedback collecting section  215  collects the feedback of employees on hotels they stayed at based on their personal experience.  
     [0045] In this manner, by collecting feedback from the employees, the feedback collecting section  215  enables evaluation of hotels by the company employees, a feature which the travel agent website  30  by itself cannot provide.  
     [0046] The feedback providing section  216  provides employee feedback on hotels to the external client  20  via the Internet  40  and processes the information stored in the feedback storing section  223  before providing it to the external client  20 .  
     [0047] The XML/HTML converting section  217  converts XML data to HTML data and vice versa to facilitate data exchange. The XML/HTML converting section  217  allows data exchange between the internal client  10  and the external client  20  as well as the travel agent website  30  by converting the data to HTML format, and data exchange within the accommodation reservation system by converting the data to XML format.  
     [0048] The employee managing section  218  manages the data relating to the employees who use the accommodation reservation system. The employee managing section  218  stores the data relating to the employees in the employee information storing section  224  and carries out search on employees stored in the employee information storing section  224 .  
     [0049]FIG. 2 shows sample contents of the favorites storing section  221 . For each employee, the employee&#39;s ID and the employee&#39;s favorite hotel(s) are stored in a correlated form in the favorites storing section  221 . The favorite hotel includes details such as the region, the name of the hotel, associated travel agency, and the hotel code.  
     [0050] The recommendation storing section  222  stores recommended hotels categorizing them region-wise. FIG. 3 shows sample contents of the recommendation storing section  222 . The information about recommended hotels is stored in a correlated form with the name of the region, and includes details such as the name of the hotel, rating, associated travel agency, and hotel code.  
     [0051] The rating is a point given to a hotel based on the feedback of an employee received by the feedback collecting section  215 . The recommendation storing section  222  stores a list of recommended hotels based on the feedback from all the employees and lists of recommended hotels based on the feedback received department-wise.  
     [0052] In this manner, by storing lists of recommended hotels based on department-wise employee feedback, the recommendation storing section  222  enables the accommodation reservation system to provide a list of recommended hotels to suit every employee.  
     [0053]FIG. 4 shows sample contents of the feedback storing section  223 . The feedback storing section  223  stores in a correlated form the hotel name and the employee feedback on the hotel obtained by the feedback collecting section  215 . The feedback includes details such as, the employee ID, spaciousness of the room, amenities, network, interior, and other comments.  
     [0054]FIG. 5 shows sample contents of the employee information storing section  224 . The employee information storing section  224  stores in a correlated form the employee-related information that an employee enters and the employee managing section  218  collects. The employee information includes the employee ID, the employee name and the department to which the employee belongs.  
     [0055] The series of operations of the accommodation reservation process that takes place in the accommodation reservation server  200  shown in FIG. 1 is explained next with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. 6.  
     [0056] The accommodation reservation server  200  receives from a user a region where accommodation is to be reserved (step S 601 ). The favorites processing section  211  searches the favorites storing section  221  for hotels that are the user&#39;s favorite in the region (steps S 602  and S 603 ).  
     [0057] If there are hotels that are the user&#39;s favorite (Yes at step S 603 ), accommodation criteria are obtained from the user (step S 604 ). The room availability inquiring section  213  specifies a favorite hotel and the accommodation criteria, inquires about room availability using the travel agent website  30  (step S 605 ), and provides the user the result of the inquiry. The reserving section  214  receives the request to reserve from the user, and reserves the accommodation using the travel agent website  30  (step S 606 ).  
     [0058] If no favorite hotel is specified (No at step S 603 ), the recommendation processing section  212  searches the recommendation storing section  222  for recommended hotels in the region specified by the user (steps  607  and  608 ). If there are hotels recommended by the other employees of the department to which the user belongs, the recommendation processing section  212  limits its search to those hotels, and if not, the recommendation processing section  212  searches the hotels recommended by all the employees.  
     [0059] If there are recommended hotels (Yes at step S 608 ), accommodation criteria are obtained from the user (step S 609 ). The room availability inquiring section  213  specifies a recommended hotel and the accommodation criteria, inquires about room availability using the travel agent website  30  (step S 610 ), and provides the user the result of the inquiry. The reserving section  214  receives the request to reserve from the user, and reserves the accommodation using the travel agent website  30  (step S 606 ).  
     [0060] If there are no recommended hotels (No at step S 608 ), accommodation criteria are obtained from the user (step S 611 ). The room availability inquiring section  213  specifies only accommodation criteria, inquires about room availability using the travel agent website  30  (step S 612 ), and provides the user the result of the inquiry. The reserving section  214  receives the request to reserve from the user, and reserves the accommodation using the travel agent website  30  (step S 606 ).  
     [0061] In this manner, by inquiring about room availability using the feedback based on the employees&#39; previous experience, the favorites processing section  211  and the recommendation processing section  212  of the accommodation reservation server  200  enable the user to efficiently reserve a hotel to suit his or her requirements.  
     [0062] The accommodation reservation for a user is further customized because of the search conducted by the recommendation processing section  212  based on department-wise feedback.  
     [0063] The series of operations of the room availability inquiring section  213  is explained next with the help of the flowchart shown in FIG. 7. The process of the room availability inquiring section  213  corresponds to the room availability inquiry (steps S 605 , S 610 , and S 612 ) process in FIG. 6.  
     [0064] The room availability inquiring section  213  checks if any favorite hotel is specified (step S 701 ). If a favorite hotel is specified (Yes at step S 701 ), the room availability inquiring section  213  fetches information relating to the favorite hotel from the favorites storing section  221  (step S 702 ), and creates an XML room availability inquiry data (S 703 ).  
     [0065] The XML room availability inquiry data is converted to an HTML room availability inquiry data by the XML/HTML converting section  217  and sent to the travel agent website  30  (step S 704 ). A list of available rooms is created using available room list creating process (step S 705 ).  
     [0066] If no favorite hotel is specified (No at step S 701 ), the room availability inquiring section  213  checks if any recommended hotel is specified (step S 706 ). If recommended hotels are specified (Yes at step S 706 ), the room availability inquiring section  213  fetches information relating to the recommended hotel from the recommendation storing section  222  (step S 707 ), and creates an XML room availability inquiry data (step S 708 ).  
     [0067] The XML/HTML converting section  217  converts the XML room availability inquiry data to an HTML room availability inquiry data and sends it to the travel agent website  30  (step S 709 ). Next, the room availability inquiring section  213  checks if room availability inquiry data has been created for all the recommended hotels (step S 710 ).  
     [0068] If room availability inquiry data has been created for all the recommended hotels (Yes at step S 710 ), a list of available rooms is created using the available room list creating process (step S 705 ). If room availability inquiring data has not been created for all the recommended hotels (No at step S 710 ), the process returns to step S 708  to create the next XML room availability inquiry data.  
     [0069] If no recommended hotels are specified (No at step S 706 ), an XML room availability inquiry data is created (step S 711 ) without any hotel specification, and the XML data is converted to an HTML room availability inquiry data by the XML/HTML converting section  217  and sent to the travel agent website  30  (step S 712 ). A list of available rooms is created using the available room list creating process (step S 705 ).  
     [0070] The available room list creating process (step S 705 ) is explained in detail with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. 8.  
     [0071] In the available room list creating process, the HTML available room list data received from the travel agent website  30  is converted to an XML available room list data (step S 801 ) using the XML/HTML converting section  217 . It is then checked whether the XML data pertains to a favorite hotel (step S 802 ) and if so, the XML data is sent to the portal server  100  (step S 806 ).  
     [0072] If the XML data does not pertain to a favorite hotel (No at step S 802 ), the feedback on hotels in the feedback storing section  223  is searched (step S 803 ), and the feedback is added to the XML available room list data (step S 804 ). If feedback from the user&#39;s department is available, only that feedback is added to the XML available room list data.  
     [0073] It is then checked if feedback on all the hotels in the XML available room list data has been added (step S 805 ). If so, the XML available room list data is sent to the portal server  100  (step S 806 ). If not (No at step S 805 ), the process returns to step S 803  to search for feedback on the next hotel on the list.  
     [0074] In this manner, the available room list creating process makes the search by the user more specific and customized, by sending to the portal server  100  the available room list data created by the travel agent website  30  with feedback of employees added to it. Further, the search is made even more specific by making available department-wise feedback.  
     [0075] The operation of the reserving section  214  of FIG. 1 is explained next with reference to the flowchart in FIG. 9. The reserving section  214  first checks if a favorite hotel is specified (step S 901 ). If a favorite hotel is specified, the reserving section  214  fetches the information relating to the favorite hotel from the favorites storing section  221  (step S 902 ) and creates an XML reservation data (step S 903 ).  
     [0076] The XML reservation data is converted to an HTML reservation data by the XML/HTML converting section  217  (step S 908 ). The HTML reservation data is then sent to the travel agent website  30  and reservation requested. An HTML reservation result data is received from the travel agent website  30 , converted to an XML reservation result data (step S 909 ), and the XML reservation data is sent to the portal server  100  (step S 910 ).  
     [0077] If no favorite hotel is specified (No at step S 901 ), the reserving section  214  checks if there are any recommended hotels specified (step S 904 ), and if so, fetches information relating to recommended hotels from the recommendation storing section  222  (step S 905 ), and creates an XML reservation data (step S 906 ).  
     [0078] The XML reservation data is converted to an HTML reservation data by the XML/HTML converting section  217  (step S 908 ). The HTML reservation data is then sent to the travel agent website  30  and reservation requested. An HTML reservation result data is received from the travel agent website  30 , converted to an XML reservation result data (step S 909 ), and the XML reservation data is sent to the portal server  100  (step S 910 ).  
     [0079] If no recommended hotels are specified (No at step S 904 ), an XML reservation data for the hotel specified by the user is created (step S 907 ). The XML reservation data is converted to an HTML reservation data by the XML/HTML converting section  217  (step S 908 ), the HTML reservation data is sent to the travel agent website  30  and reservation requested. An HTML reservation result data is received from the travel agent website  30 , converted to an XML reservation result data (step S 909 ), and sent to the portal server  100  (step S 910 ).  
     [0080] The operations of the feedback collecting section  215  of FIG. 1 are explained next with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. 10. The feedback collecting section  215  first fetches the feedback on hotels a user enters (step S 1001 ) and stores the feedback in the feedback storing section  223 .  
     [0081] The next step is to inquire the user if the hotel is to be entered in the favorites (step S 1002 ). If the user indicates that the hotel is to be entered in the favorites, the hotel is stored in the favorites storing section  221  using the favorites processing section  211  (step S 1003 ).  
     [0082] The hotel is then rated using the feedback stored in the feedback storing section  223 , and based on the rating result, the recommended hotels in the recommendation storing section  222  are updated (step S 1004 ).  
     [0083] In this manner, the feedback collecting section  215 , collects and stores in the feedback storing section  223  the feedback on hotels from employees based on their personal experience, thereby enabling another employee to select a hotel based on the feedback of employees who have actually stayed at the hotel.  
     [0084] To sum up, according to the present invention, the feedback collecting section  215  collects feedback based on actual personal experience of employees, the recommendation processing section  212  furnishes information relating to recommended hotels based on the employee feedback, and the room availability inquiring section  213  provides the user an available room list created by the travel agent website  30  along with feedback of respective hotels. Therefore, the employee can make a more personalized choice for his or her hotel accommodation.  
     [0085] The implementation of the invention need not be limited to just one company, as explained here, but may have portal servers of a plurality of companies connected to the accommodation reservation server  200  via the Internet. The accommodation reservation system in such a case may be made to provide information customized company-wise instead of department-wise.  
     [0086] The present invention as implemented on an independent accommodation reservation system is explained here. However, the present invention can also be offered as a part of a corporate travel management system.  
     [0087] According to the present invention, feedback on hotels is collected from the users based on their personal experience and the feedback is provided to the user along with the room availability information. In this way, customized information regarding room availability is provided and the accommodation reservation process made more efficient.  
     [0088] Although the invention has been described with respect to a specific embodiment for a complete and clear disclosure, the appended claims are not to be thus limited but are to be construed as embodying all modifications and alternative constructions that may occur to one skilled in the art which fairly fall within the basic teaching herein set forth.