Patent ID: 8370322

Claim:
A method for identifying influential individuals in a customer arrivals list, comprising: importing a customer arrivals list from a hospitality enterprise data source, wherein the arrivals list comprises a plurality of entries, each entry corresponding to a customer and comprising at least a name of the customer; collecting profile information for the name in a designated entry in the arrivals list, from designated sources on the web, said designated sources comprising at least one designated web biography corpus; assigning a web importance score to each of said designated sources; when said profile information identifies one or more individuals who have the name in the designated entry: determining a level of certainty for at least one of the one or more identified individuals, that the identified individual be the same individual as the customer corresponding to the designated entry, based on data in the designated entry; determining a level of influence for the designated entry, based on the collected profile information, said level of influence being based on a ranking of the relative significance, in the context of the hospitality industry, of said designated sources that refer to said at least one of the one or more identified individuals, said ranking being based at least partly on said web importance score; and assigning a hospitality venue selection influence metric (HVSIM) to the designated entry which indicates the extent to which said at least one of the one or more identified individuals is likely to determine or influence, actively or passively, the decisions of other people in their selection of a hospitality venue, based on said level of influence.