U.S. patent application number 14/759453 was filed with the patent office on 2015-12-10 for unified travel interface.
The applicant listed for this patent is SERKO LIMITED. Invention is credited to Darrin John GRAFTON, Robert James SHAW.
Application Number | 20150356471 14/759453 |
Document ID | / |
Family ID | 51167484 |
Filed Date | 2015-12-10 |
United States Patent
Application |
20150356471 |
Kind Code |
A1 |
SHAW; Robert James ; et
al. |
December 10, 2015 |
UNIFIED TRAVEL INTERFACE
Abstract
A travel booking system abstracts the user from a travel search
of web and internet searches initiated by the user and the search
result of those searches to present the user with a consistent
interface for both entry and results. As part of the abstraction
the search introduces elements of one or more traveller profiles to
delineate the searches. The user may investigate the search results
for a trip or alternate route options returned by a search to
further direct the search or to book a search result.
Inventors: |
SHAW; Robert James;
(Auckland, NZ) ; GRAFTON; Darrin John; (Auckland,
NZ) |
|
Applicant: |
Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Type |
SERKO LIMITED |
Auckland |
|
NZ |
|
|
Family ID: |
51167484 |
Appl. No.: |
14/759453 |
Filed: |
January 9, 2014 |
PCT Filed: |
January 9, 2014 |
PCT NO: |
PCT/NZ2014/000003 |
371 Date: |
July 7, 2015 |
Current U.S.
Class: |
705/6 |
Current CPC
Class: |
G06Q 10/025 20130101;
G06Q 10/02 20130101 |
International
Class: |
G06Q 10/02 20060101
G06Q010/02 |
Foreign Application Data
Date |
Code |
Application Number |
Jan 9, 2013 |
NZ |
605545 |
Jan 14, 2013 |
NZ |
605725 |
Nov 19, 2013 |
NZ |
617953 |
Nov 19, 2013 |
NZ |
617955 |
Claims
1. A travel booking system for booking a trip by a traveller, the
travel booking system providing to the user a consistent interface
for receiving the travel phases of the travel origin, the travel
destination, any required waypoints between the two, any required
facilities at travel origin, at travel waypoints, during travel
between travel waypoints or at travel destination and any time
requirements of the travel phases; the travel booking system
responding to the travel phases and time and facility requirements
to query travel providers having disparate interfaces and outputs
and to provide at least one solution to each phase of travel
presenting to the user the at least one solution for each phase in
a consistent interface.
2. A travel booking system for booking a trip by a traveller as
claimed in claim 1 wherein the travel booking system has access to
a traveller profile identifying established traveller requirements
for different required facilities and provides these as a filter to
the booking process.
3. A travel booking system for booking a trip by a traveller as
claimed in claim 1 wherein where the user is a corporate user the
travel booking system has access to a corporate profile
establishing corporate requirements for different required
facilities and provides these as a filter to the booking
process.
4. A travel booking system for receiving a travel request including
information on travel origins, travel destination, travel
waypoints; facilities required at origin, waypoints or destinations
and any required times at origin, destination or waypoints, the
travel booking system determining solutions for each phase of the
travel by searching disparate internet connected sites, receiving
solution data from the disparate internet connected sites,
resolving the data received from the disparate sites to a
consistent format and outputting the data in a consistent format as
one or more solutions to the travel request.
5. A travel booking system for booking a trip by a traveller as
claimed in claim 4 wherein each of the travel requests includes a
weighting for each of the requirements, the weighting determining
the relevance of each requirement in the ordering of the
solutions.
6. Travel booking equipment programmed to receive a travel request
from a user including information on travel origins, travel
destination, any travel waypoints; any facilities required at
origin, waypoints or destinations and any required specific times
at origin, destination or waypoints, the travel booking equipment
program determining solutions for each phase of the travel by
searching disparate internet connected sites, receiving solution
data from the disparate internet connected sites, resolving the
data received from the disparate sites to a consistent format and
outputting the data in a consistent format to the user as one or
more solutions to the travel request.
7. Travel booking equipment as claimed in claim 6 wherein any
travel request information from the user is augmented by profile
information relevant to the travel request and stored in at least
one profile store accessible to the travel booking equipment.
8. Travel booking equipment as claimed in claim 7 wherein profile
information relevant to the travel request is stored in at least
one individual traveller profile.
9. Travel booking equipment as claimed in claim 8 wherein an
individual traveller profile is stored in a social site
profile.
10. Travel booking equipment as claimed in claim 7 wherein profile
information is stored in a corporate profile.
Description
TECHNICAL FIELD
[0001] The invention generally relates to the provision of a system
for booking travel, travel management and travel booking monitoring
for travel and for associated products or services via the
internet, whether by website or a hosted application.
[0002] More particularly the invention relates to the providing an
assistant to the booking process which will implement a provider
independent uniform interface for all aspects of the booking
process including monitoring post booking.
BACKGROUND ART
[0003] Booking travel, or items associated with travel such as
accommodation, taxis, cars, restaurants, air travel, etc. is
usually carried out via a user on an internet site or a booking
agent using either an internet site or a client interface to a
hosted application. There is a continuing trend for persons booking
travel or other products or services associated with travel to book
themselves rather than to book using a travel agent, whether or not
that agent provides access via the internet. In booking travel
usually an internet site handles just one aspect of travel, for
instance booking a rental car, although some sites will handle
booking an airline trip, accommodation at a destination and a
rental car at the destination--but usually for just one airline or
airline alliance, and for a limited range of accommodation sites
and rental car companies.
[0004] Usually while doing this a user has to handle several
different interfaces for the different modes of travel or
accommodation and may have to deal with different interfaces for
each different accommodation site or rental company. There is the
additional problem of using whatever loyalty or rewards scheme a
particular company has created and either claiming the reward for
that part of a trip after the fact or trying to do it while putting
together what may be a complex trip.
[0005] This results in user frustration because it becomes a
challenge to deal with each different interface, to ensure that the
service or product available is what is required, to make sure that
dates and times of one service ties in with every other.
[0006] Additionally trying to manage or monitor the eventual travel
and accommodation bookings requires that the user return to the
individual sites where the bookings were created.
[0007] The present invention provides a solution to this and other
problems which offers advantages over the prior art or which will
at least provide the public with a useful choice.
[0008] All references, including any patents or patent applications
cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference.
No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The
discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and
the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and
pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood
that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to
herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of
these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the
art, in New Zealand or in any other country.
[0009] A reference to an "ERP" is a reference to an Enterprise
Resource Planning system including at least an accounting system
and a corporate travel planning system including itinerary planning
and expenditure capability.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0010] In one embodiment the invention consists in a travel booking
system for booking a trip by a traveller, the travel booking system
providing to the user a consistent interface for receiving the
travel phases of the travel origin, the travel destination, any
required waypoints between the two, any required facilities at
travel origin, at travel waypoints, during travel between travel
waypoints or at travel destination and any time requirements of the
travel phases; the travel booking system responding to the travel
phases and time and facility requirements to query travel providers
having disparate interfaces and outputs and to provide at least one
solution to each phase of travel presenting to the user the at
least one solution for each phase in a consistent interface. [0011]
Preferably the travel booking system has access to a traveller
profile identifying established traveller requirements for
different required facilities and provides these as a filter to the
booking process. [0012] Preferably where the user is a corporate
user the travel booking system has access to a corporate profile
establishing corporate requirements for different required
facilities and provides these as a filter to the booking process.
[0013] In an alternate embodiment the invention relates to a travel
booking system for receiving a travel request including information
on travel origins, travel destination, travel waypoints; facilities
required at origin, waypoints or destinations and any required
times at origin, destination or waypoints, the travel booking
system determining solutions for each phase of the travel by
searching disparate internet connected sites, receiving solution
data from the disparate internet connected sites, resolving the
data received from the disparate sites to a consistent format and
outputting the data in a consistent format as one or more solutions
to the travel request. [0014] Preferably wherein each of the travel
requests includes a weighting for each of the requirements, the
weighting determining the relevance of each requirement in the
ordering of the solutions. [0015] In yet a further embodiment the
invention relates to travel booking equipment programmed to receive
a travel request from a user including information on travel
origins, travel destination, any travel waypoints; any facilities
required at origin, waypoints or destinations and any required
specific times at origin, destination or waypoints, the travel
booking equipment program determining solutions for each phase of
the travel by searching disparate internet connected sites,
receiving solution data from the disparate internet connected
sites, resolving the data received from the disparate sites to a
consistent format and outputting the data in a consistent format to
the user as one or more solutions to the travel request. [0016]
Preferably any travel request information from the user is
augmented by profile information relevant to the travel request and
stored in at least one profile store accessible to the travel
booking equipment. [0017] Preferably profile information relevant
to the travel request is stored in at least one individual
traveller profile. [0018] Preferably an individual traveller
profile is stored in a social site profile. [0019] Preferably
profile information is stored in a corporate profile.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
[0020] FIG. 1 is a general illustrative view of a normal travel
booking process.
[0021] FIG. 2 is a diagram of the procedures which combine to
extract information for choosing travel and options.
[0022] FIG. 3 is a sector chart of a typical trip as booked by the
process.
[0023] FIG. 4 is a demonstration of the ability to click down into
the sector chart for information.
[0024] FIG. 5 is a view of the traveller interface screen.
[0025] FIG. 6 is a view of some of the facilities available to the
booking process.
[0026] FIG. 7 shows some aspects of the reminder system associated
with the travel bookings and monitoring.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
[0027] With a move to online booking of travel and travel
associated products or services via web sites or internet connected
applications rather than booking via a travel agent (whether online
or not) there is an increasing requirement to provide simpler
booking for online bookers and their traveller(s).
[0028] Often different items are booked at different web sites,
with each web site having its own paradigm displaying information
in its own way and following its own booking routine. Even where a
site such as an airline provides ancillary processes for booking
other items, such as rental cars or accommodation the interface for
the rental car booking or the accommodation booking may have little
relationship to the airline travel booking process.
[0029] Where the product or service is a lower volume item, for
instance a cruise booking or a river rapids trip, the interface is
likely to be individualistic and to require some time to appreciate
and possibly more time to locate the cost of the service. This
results in potential confusion for the user.
[0030] Typically, as shown in FIG. 1 a user 101 at a desk PC 102 or
mobile phone 103 may book via the internet 104 accommodation at
such as a motel 106 or a hotel 107. They may also book travel via
such as an airline 108, a train 109 or a rental car 110.
Alternatively they may telephone via phone 105 a travel agent 111
who may book via a corporate network 112 the same services using
either the same web sites or a travel dedicated application. In
each case the travel typically involves one or more searches to
find travel and facilities which most nearly match the user
requirements.
[0031] A typical trip consists of various phases of Travel, Stay,
Eat, Work, Play and Rest. Assuming a typical overseas trip the
journey will consist of travelling to an airport, travel to a
destination airport which may involve transfers, travel from the
destination airport to the actual destination, and work or rest at
the destination. Each of the phases of Travel may have to be
separately booked, as may the phases of Stay (as at an airline
transfer lounge) Eat (at a restaurant) Rest (at a hotel) or Play
(as at a gymnasium). Again typically each of these normally
requires booking via a different web site or through a different
web service with each having a totally different interface, and
much time can be wasted coming to terms with each different
interface. Worse is that some of the phases may require web
searches to determine what facilities exist at a certain
destination, and where they are in relation to other facilities,
for instance the location of a gym relative to a motel.
[0032] The present invention provides a user interface to a travel
search and booking engine which extracts or inserts parameters to
guide the search engine in a search for travel available from an
origin to a destination. It is necessary that the search engine
have access to web services and web sites provided for booking
travel or facilities used during travel and that it be capable of
extracting information from these services or sites in order to
present results of any search to a user in a consistent manner. The
search engine, in providing results, should weight them in regard
to how closely they approach the original requirements. Since the
requirements may be complex the original requirements may include
some weighting parameters to assist in the final weighting.
[0033] Many travel related services provide API's (Application
Programming Interfaces) to access web services and receive
information from these services. Some API's provide the ability to
book via a web service. Necessarily where a site covers many
different facilities (airlines, cruises, accommodation, car rental,
game park visits, theme park visits) the API is complex and does
not include all providers of these facilities. Additionally some of
the services cover extremely niche markets and the work required to
create a web service to access the API is not inconsiderable.
Examples of some publically available complex travel API's are
those of Sabre, Amadeus, Serko and Travelport.
[0034] With the availability of the internet it is now feasible to
search for and to extract information on facilities within a
particular area or over a particular route with reasonable
reliability and this in combination with the use of the more common
API's allows a search engine to access enough data to return valid
information allowing a choice of facilities and further to book
such facilities where there is a booking service available or if
the service is a web site it follows one of the established booking
patterns.
[0035] In order to do this FIG. 2 shows the basics of a system for
deriving data, presenting the required information and booking as
necessary. A user or traveller with a device at 201 (laptop, PC,
smartphone, tablet) having entered their user ID accesses a search
interface 202 which connects to an internet connection 206 via a
traffic interceptor 203. The search interface creates a search
which accesses one or more travel suppliers API's or web sites.
Typically these will be air travel suppliers because most travel
searches start with an air travel search, and searches are made for
the travel the traveller requires. The traffic interceptor derives
the search parameters from the through traffic and begins to
provide assistive parameters and information to help the traveller
in finding the best travel route and transport combination for the
desired trip. To do this it initially uses information from the
traveller profile 204 and/or the corporate profile 205 if the
traveller is a corporate traveller. The data from these assists in
refining what is returned to the traveller from the search, for
instance if an airline sector no longer has seats in business class
for that flight on that day and the corporate policy is to always
fly business class then that flight on that sector, and possibly
that airline for that route, will not be returned as one of the
choices for the traveller.
[0036] It can be seen that the user is abstracted from the actual
search with the result that complications which would complexify
the search are much reduced,
[0037] Connected to the traffic interceptor is a booking system
provider 209 which provides assistance by querying through the
internet connection 206 for information related to what the
traveller is querying for. Thus for a multi-sector air trip it may
query transit items 216 which consists of searches specially
crafted to provide information on transit conditions at the
airport(s) through which the traveller would be transiting. Where
the corporation or traveller profile shows that the traveller has
airline lounge access to one of the airline lounges at that transit
airport this information would be shown on an associative interface
208 of the display adjacent to the search interface section which
shows search results.
[0038] Similarly the booking system provider 209 has backend
connections to information which either relates to risks to which
the traveller may be exposed or to information which will be used
at the time any booking is finally made. This may include warnings
where the traveller is transiting or has a destination in a country
or part of a country about which an avoidance warning has been
issued, or about any special culturally sensitive items such as a
requirement for hair covering in females.
[0039] The booking system provider may additionally call on a route
micro-mapper 210 which given the available information on the
origin, travel waypoints and destination allows the micro-mapper to
research the available routes and transport options available on
these routes. Thus the micro-mapper may map any available routes
from the travellers known home address to the nearest international
airport, from the airport to a required waypoint, from there to the
international airport nearest the destination, from the airport to
the nearest rail station, from that rail station to the one closest
to the destination, and the taxi route to the destination.
[0040] In doing this the route micro-mapper consults rail route
planner 222, water route planner 223, vehicle route planner 224 and
air route planner 225. These planners formulate routes as possible
between the points it is initially given by a known "shortest
route, shortest time" algorithm to arrive at segments of travel by
particular travel methods. In arriving at these routes the planners
will consider information from the relevant user or corporate
profiles for preferred airlines, taxi, rail, car or boat transport
providers before it considers other possibilities. This information
may include weightings for various factors used in formulating the
trip, for instance in corporate use a weighting for cost may be
balanced against a weighting for the role of the traveller, to
ensure that the managing director does not travel economy class.
The information from the profiles may be used as a filter to
restrict either the search or the returned information to display
only that which meets the profile requirements, for instance a
wheelchair traveller may not be shown flights on aircraft where the
centre aisle includes a wing spar obstruction.
[0041] Once having derived possible routes the booking system
provider 209 queries the appropriate service or web site at 214,
215, 217,218, 219 for available transport closest to the required
date and time until it finds one or more routes with transport on
those routes which will meet the times required by the original
input. These routes and time may differ from those located by the
travellers initial search and would appear in the associative
interface as suggestions. The traveller may adopt one of these
suggestions simply by clicking it, when it will replace any
solution for that sector or sectors of travel.
[0042] Besides booking travel, such as airline, rail or bus the
traveller may book a rental car at a waypoint or destination, the
booking system provider 209 again interceding by providing a
crafted search of vehicle providers at 219 to produce suggestions
in associative interface 208. Similarly accommodation may be
searched and adopted by crafted searches at 220 and recreational
items by a search through item 221.
[0043] Sectors of travel, accommodation, etc may be adopted by the
traveller as the travel booking process advances, and such sectors
may appear in a status bar on the display.
[0044] When a trip is finally adopted in full the booking systems
provider 209 confirms that the expense parameters of the trip meet
the requirements of any corporate ERP (Enterprise Resource
Planning) system 212, that any corporate policies have been adhered
to, that the traveller has been advised of any risks and has
accepted them, and then books the various sectors of the trip
including any accommodation or any recreational items chosen by the
traveller. It may at the same time update any loyalty or reward
schemes falling within the trip and expend or update any traveller
mobile wallets as necessary using backend connections 211. If this
is a corporate trip any booked items which are seen by the system
as personal are charged back to the traveller by the corporate ERP
system.
[0045] Once the trip is booked it creates and stores an itinerary
at 213 as well as loading it to any relevant device of the
traveller. This itinerary will include reminders for specified
events within the trip, such as hotel book-out times, airport
travel reminder times, meeting times, etc. Other things which are
loaded to the travellers device with the itinerary are those items
which will provide assistance on the trip, including an app for
locating car spaces at airport parking, and remembering the parking
space, storage of electronic boarding passes for the airports,
airport maps either as still images or as interactive maps,
directions on how to reach a hotel from an airport, how to transit
from one part of an airport to another, storage of bag tag details,
capture of receipt details for corporate proof of purchase.
[0046] The system which created the bookings may also be used to
access and review these created bookings, typically by using the
trip or service reference of the individual sectors of a trip to
query the service provider. Equally it is possible to retrieve the
details of a trip and monitor the completion of each sector of a
trip by querying the service provider, again by a consistent
interface.
[0047] The interface shown to the traveller for carrying out the
search will always be the same for a particular facet of a travel
search, and the results returned will always be in the same format
as the booking system provider 209 intercedes and queries one or
more web services and collates the results as well as querying
established web sites and scraping the results, returning an
ordered list for the travellers viewing. In a similar manner the
booking system provider may carry out an ancillary search at the
travellers destination or waypoint for accommodation or transport
if this is indicated as being required and will display results
found in the associative interface 208. The process of querying web
service API's is well known as is the process of querying a web
site and extracting results from that query for further
interrogation or display. The booking system provider 209
systematically deals with the process of converting the information
from the traveller input interface to the disparate input
interfaces of API's or web sites, and processing the information
from the disparate results into a standard format for the traveller
display interface.
[0048] Preferably the interface is based on display templates for
each facet of a travel search and for each set of results returned
from a travel search. Such templates may be XML documents to allow
consistency in building them.
[0049] FIG. 3 demonstrates a possible manner in which travel data
may be presented to a traveller for acceptance before booking. As
label 301 indicates the travel is from Auckland New Zealand to
Bendigo Australia on the 23 Jul. 2014. The trip is presented broken
into 5 sectors, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306 each in a different travel
environment. Boxes 307 and 323 are bolded, representing the sole
information besides the origin, destination and date originally
entered by the user. Box 313 is banded indicating that this data
was present in the users or corporate profile.
[0050] Sector 1 (302) requires a departure 307 from the travellers
home at 0615. The traveller travels at 308 by Autocorp Taxis,
chosen by price and past reputation to arrive at Auckland
international departures (309) at 0720, the time being arrived at
from a likely maximum for travel from the travellers home at that
time of the morning, as calculated from a mapping utility.
[0051] Sector 2 (303) demonstrates the sector from arrival at
Auckland departures (310) through booking in (311) to flight Q3051
by 0730 through to clearance at Customs and Emigration (312) after
which the traveller may retreat to Emirates lounge (313) until
required to appear at the gate lounge (314) at 0815.
[0052] In Sector 3 (304) the traveller enters the flight at 0817
(315) and takes seat 12A (316) taken as the travellers profile
expressed a preference for a window seat. The aircraft is supposed
to arrive in Melbourne at 0940 local time (317) and the traveller
may then transit immigration and customs.
[0053] Sector 4 (305) covers the pickup of a rental car at 319 and
a subsequent departure to Geelong (320) at an estimated time of
1020. This time includes an exigency of 20 minutes to allow for
consistent lateness in the arrival of the airline on this route in
this season.
[0054] Sector 5 (306) includes at 321 the arrival of the traveller
at Geelong, an arrival at the firm being visited (322) at 1115 for
a meeting (323) at 1120. After the meeting (324) the traveller
departs Bendigo for whatever sector is next.
[0055] While the trip shown covers only five sectors of travel the
system is capable of planning a complete itinerary of many sectors
which includes travel by any mix of air, sea, rail, vehicle with
accommodation interspersed at waypoints or the final destination,
booking for restaurants made at waypoints or the final destination,
recreational bookings at any place.
[0056] FIG. 4 shows the ability to dig deeper into the data of a
listed route, accessible by JSON on the web listing of the
sectorised route. Clicking on the content of FIG. 3 box 308
produces at 401 the booking information for the trip with Autocorp
Taxis. Clicking this information produces box 402, the list of the
highest rated options for the taxi ride and the rates of the firms
concerned. Similarly clicking box 311 produces the trip information
for Flight Q3051 at 403 and clicking that information provides at
404 the list of highest rated flight options for that portion of
the trip. In turn clicking on these flights provides at 405, 406
further information on the flights and the booking system providers
estimation of the facilities.
[0057] FIG. 5 Shows a possible version of the user interface in
which part 501 provides the user search interface, part 502 a
message interface, mainly for risk warnings, part 503 an
associative interface for information associated with whatever
search the user is currently carrying out and part 504 a status bar
carrying information on what sectors of travel related to this
search have been adopted by the user.
[0058] Search interface 501 contains a selection menu 505 for a
service, with mutable input boxes 506 providing information
relative to the menu choice. Once information is entered in the
input boxes a Search button 508 may be clicked to perform a search
producing selectable results in result box 507.
[0059] The status bar may carry an abbreviated version of the
sector display of FIG. 3, showing the full display if clicked.
[0060] FIG. 6 more clearly delineates the items found in the
backend connections of FIG. 2 item 211. As seen in FIG. 6 the items
form a collection 601 which includes booking related items 602 such
as the integration 603 with the corporate ERP system, the use of
Google Wallet 604 as a payment method and the use of pre-trip
authorisation 605 with whichever service provider booking is
eventually carried out with. Also included are the ability to
change bookings (606) including the itinerary reminders (607) to
accept Google Offers 608 which offer savings in the trip, and to
implement at 609 pre or post ticketing changes.
[0061] The ability to view communications 610 from such as media
611 created by booking providers direct to the traveller can be
allowed for, and other documentation from available services can be
provided at 612.
[0062] Payments 613 while on the trip can be provided from expense
accounts 614 for that purpose or by paying by NFC (Near Field
Contact) payments 615 from dedicated accounts. The ability also
exists to include information from profiles 616 other than the
individual and corporate profiles internally held, such as Google+
profiles or profiles held on social services such as Facebook, or
with travel booking sites. Typically individual travel profiles
include the usual name, address, passport number, citizenship,
aircraft meal preferences and seat preferences. Corporate profiles
include such things as fare or accommodation levels, cost centre
information, role information. The present system proposes to
include profiles from social or other useful sites which the
traveller belongs to as well as considerably increased personal or
company data sufficient to assist to a greater extent in booking
travel.
[0063] During the search for trip information other information may
be offered at 619 including duty of care information from the
corporate database, information on groups, resources or crew 621 if
the trip forms part of a bulk personnel booking or information from
other travel integration services at 622. Messages 623 relating to
the trip itself may be derived from Google Alerts 624 on newsworthy
matters and airline or country originated alerts 625. Similar
sources may also provide video allowing navigation through airports
used in the trip at 626 and also applications for tracking tags on
luggage at 627.
[0064] FIG. 7 shows some aspects of the reminder system 213 which
is associated with the itinerary as stored on the travellers
device. The reminder system on the device ("Concierge") is shown as
a smartphone application with a base menu at 701 which includes
entry to trips at 705, the users profile at 706, callable
assistance at 707 and a concierge service at 708.
[0065] Viewing the contents of the trips item 705 at 702 shows a
listing of existing trips and associated items, from air trips at
709, 710, 711 to a conference 711 to be held at several venues.
Clicking on the conference item 711 brings up the listing 703 which
includes at 713 the initial conference data, and below the
information for one of the flights associated with the
conference.
[0066] The flight at 715 is on the date at 714 and has departure
information in column 716 and arrival information in column 717.
The item 718 in the departure column provides clickable access to
either a viewable map or to a video of the airport terminal. In the
departure column 717 are an access to an airport map 719 and access
to details 720 on a rental car to be picked up at the destination.
These details are further shown in item 704 with the pickup date at
721, the item name at 722, the pickup data column at 723, the drop
off data in column 724 and the rental company and relevant contact
data at 729. Notable are the clickable pick up map 725, drop off
map 726 and pick up and drop off city maps 727 and 728.
[0067] The application generates reminders for the times appearing
in the Concierge entries, as found necessary.
[0068] While FIG. 7 shows information only for a flight and car
associated trip clearly the Concierge is adaptable to use for
accommodation (book-in times, book out times, booking references,
discounts, company cost centre reference, etc.). Similarly because
the mobile has access to other online services it may provide
predictive and/or monitoring recommendations for delays, traffic
issues, late arrivals, accidents, amended schedules, etc.
VARIATIONS
[0069] It is to be understood that even though numerous
characteristics and advantages of the various embodiments of the
present invention have been set forth in the foregoing description,
together with details of the structure and functioning of various
embodiments of the invention, this disclosure is illustrative only,
and changes may be made in detail so long as the functioning of the
invention is not adversely affected.
[0070] For instance while the invention is described in relation to
the use of airline travel with associated accommodation it may
equally well apply to booking travel, playing ground seats and
accommodation for football fanatics to a series of games at
different venues.
[0071] Similarly while the system is described as a travel booking
system it may equally be used to manage and review or monitor
existing bookings for a traveller or corporate entity.
INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY
[0072] The method of the invention is used in the derivation,
transfer, correlation and presentation of data to aid in the
process of booking travel by providing a traveller with a travel
booking interface which is consistent in the input and presentation
of the data no matter how derived. This results in the normalised
display of information about and relating to the travel in a form
which is consistent but which allows easy investigation in depth of
the travel results and is therefore time saving for the traveller.
The present invention is therefore industrially applicable.
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