DESC:FIELD OF INVENTION
[001] The present invention relates generally to a reservation system for a transportation carrier; and, more specifically, to a system and method for supporting transfer, exchange and sharing of seats among transportation service providers through inventory control.
BACKGROUND
[002] Computer technology is increasingly used by travellers to make traveling less difficult and more efficient. Automated booking systems, for example, enable travellers to view prices and schedules for passenger vehicles such as airplanes, buses, trains etc., as well as purchase tickets for such vehicles when a suitable match is found. Flight and public transportation status systems are available to track delays in scheduled flights, buses, and passenger trains, often enabling travellers to view in real-time where a passenger vehicle is presently located and when it will arrive at its intended destination. In addition, for road travel by car, traffic information is often available in real time to enable travellers to identify delays on certain routes, and in many cases, to change their planned routes in order to avoid delays.
[003] Concurrent with the improvements in computer technology is an increasing reliance on mobile devices such as smart phones by travellers. Many travel-related tools that were once limited to access via computers, e.g., via web sites, are now optimized for access via a mobile device, whether by mobile device optimized web sites or web-based applications, or via dedicated mobile applications.
[004] Despite these improvements in travel-related computer technology, challenges still remain for many travellers. In particular, travellers are still often at risk of encountering unplanned travel incidents such as cancellations due to overbookings, flight cancellations, delays and other travel-related problems that may necessitate changes to their itineraries, and such changes are often stressful and problematic for the travellers, not to mention the travel providers and agents that the travelers rely upon to schedule and otherwise handle their itineraries.
[005] Sometimes transport service providers take bookings over and above the available inventory of seats in order to compensate for anticipated cancellations. This is done to prevent loss of revenue to the service provider due to empty seats. In such cases sometimes a situation arises when the transport such as a flight has been overbooked and there have been no cancellations or lesser cancellations than were anticipated. Similarly, situations arise when a traveller knows that he or she is going to miss a flight, or when the traveller has already missed a flight, the traveller will often need to contact the same service provider i.e the airline which will rebook seat in the next available flight to the destination by the same service provider. This often lead to long delays for the traveller.
[006] Additionally, the traveller may need to consider all of the other elements and travel services in the itinerary (e.g., hotels, taxi etc.) that may be impacted by any changes, and make appropriate arrangements to obtain any necessary extensions, updates or cancellations. For example, after missing a flight, a traveller taking the next flight to the same destination will typically arrive later, and potentially after a pre-booked taxi was scheduled. Even a hotel room reservation may expire due to the extended delay. Furthermore, if a traveller is required to take a flight to a different city and stay overnight before flying to their original destination, any hotel room reservation in the original destination may need to be cancelled and a new hotel room reservation booked in the other city.
[007] The update of these various impacted elements is often complicated, time consuming, irritating and stressful for a traveller, and a travel may encounter numerous problems when addressing these elements. For example, a traveller may encounter difficulties attempting to rebook new flights, hotels or taxis by phone, and may be subject to high international calling costs if he or she is traveling outside of his or her country of origin. In addition, searching and rebooking new flights, hotels, cars, etc., is often time consuming, even with the advances in online travel services, and a traveller may not have sufficient time to change their itinerary, e.g., if on a business trip and busy with meetings and other obligations.
[008] In addition, in some instances the need to rebook travel services in a dynamic environment in which pricing and/or availability are in a state of constant flux can add additional stress to a traveller. Possible changes to an itinerary that are initially located by a traveller may no longer be available, or may be more expensive, when the traveller is finally able to confirm those changes. Considering that a traveller may also be forced to deal with other issues related to such unplanned travel incident, the additional stress associated with rebooking under such circumstances is often unwelcome.
[009] Therefore, a substantial need exists for a manner of facilitating the rebooking of travel services and itineraries in response to overbookings, cancellations, delays and other types of incidents that might impact a traveller’s itinerary.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
[0010] The invention addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art by providing in one aspect a method and system that automatically transfers or exchanges seats with an alternate travel service provider to a traveller in response to detection of a travel incident that impacts one or more travel services in the traveller’s itinerary. By doing so, the impact of a travel incident on the traveller, and in many cases, the resulting stress of the traveller and the burden of rearranging the traveller’s schedule to accommodate the travel incident, may be reduced.
[0011] Therefore, consistent with one aspect of the invention a travel itinerary is updated in response to a travel incident by detecting a travel incident associated with a travel itinerary for a traveller using at least one processing unit, where the travel itinerary includes a plurality of travel services, and where the travel incident results in an inability of the traveller to utilize at least one of the plurality of travel services; identifying at least one impacted travel service among the plurality of travel services in the travel itinerary that is impacted by the detected travel incident; and automatically proposing a plurality of alternate travel services to replace the impacted travel service in the travel itinerary or, if the traveller so opts, automatically transferring or exchanging the seat with another travel service provider.
OBJECTS
[0012] It is therefore an object of the disclosure to provide a new and improved method to schedule transportation services.
[0013] It is another object of the disclosure to provide a seat sharing arrangement wherein various transport service provider may transfer or exchange some seats with other transportation service providers.
[0014] A further object of the invention is to organize the travel services with a view to better service the end customer who will not have to face the stress due to cancellations and missed transport service.
[0015] Another object of the invention is to make the process of obtaining transport services fast, convenient, and reliable.
[0016] An even further object of the disclosure is to provide a novel method to manage non-scheduled capacity to meet demand.
DESCRIPTION
[0017] For ease of reference, the following discussion is described primarily in relation to the airlines industry. However, it will be understood that this is merely for exemplary purposes. The system and method described herein may be adapted for use with any transportation provider, such as a bus company, a cruise line, a train service, and so on.
[0018] Transportation carriers such as airlines, trains, cruise lines, bus companies and the like generally employ some type of reservation systems. Such systems are used to book passengers, track baggage, and manage departures and arrivals.
[0019] Such systems have historically managed inventory at the physical level. For instance, a reservation system used by an airline maintains an inventory of available seats for each provided flight by flight number. Customers generally purchase seats on one of these flights by specifying a flight number, the desired number of seats, and the flight compartment (e.g., first class, coach, business class). If enough seats are available to accommodate this booking request, the seats are sold on the specified flight, and the inventory record for that flight is updated. This is accomplished by decrementing the number of available seats within the specified compartment for this flight by the number of seats purchased.
[0020] Sometimes transport service providers take bookings over and above the available inventory of seats in order to compensate for anticipated cancellations. This is done to prevent loss of revenue to the service provider due to empty seats. In such cases sometimes a situation arises when the transport such as a flight has been overbooked and there have been no cancellations or lesser cancellations than were anticipated.
[0021] The system and method of the current invention provides a mechanism for managing inventory of various airlines thus creating a market level view of the inventory. This allows bookings to be transferred, exchanged or shared with different airlines. Programmable rules are used to control the management of bookings.
[0022] One or more seats of the transport service provider are maintained in the system as those which can be shared/shifted/exchanged between different operators. The target operators are allocated/assigned only through system administrators. In accordance with the present embodiment of the invention, the target operators are configured based on date and time of the transport service. These configurations are also done through system administrators.
[0023] In accordance with the present embodiment of the invention, the working logics are provided as follows:
a. Consider one or more booked seats in Service-1 (which could be Airlines, Bus, Train service providers) on specific date and time;
b. The operator of this Service-1 can select one or more of these booked seats and initiate a request to assign target operators to accept these seats in their Airline/Bus /Train, for example Service-2. Seat status in Service-1 will be changed to Seat Sharing/Transfer/Exchange;
c. The target operators can see this Seat Sharing/Transfer/Exchange request in their systems. They can view the entire details about each of requested seats which would include the entire passenger Information such as Name, Age, Seat Number in Service-1, PNR, Ticket No etc;
d. The target operators can then map each of the requested seats in the list against specific seats in Service-2. In an embodiment of the invention, the target operator may accept one or more request for seat sharing, transfer or exchange but not all. Therefore, the target operators can drop some seats in case if they don't want to accept all seats;
e. After mapping the requested seats from the list they can proceed to approve such seats to accept the sharing/transfer/exchange requests of Service-1. Once the requested seats are approved, the concerned seats in Service-2 will be blocked and allocated to the passengers of Service-1. Such seats will then be unavailable for booking from other sources;
f. In an embodiment of the present invention, Service-2 can reject the entire Seat Sharing/Transfer/Exchange request so that there will not be any change in the Service-2 seats and occupancy. In such situation Seat Status will be reverted to previous one in Service-1;
[0024] Alternatively, in the event of the travel incident such as overbooking or cancellation of transport service, the affected traveller of such transportation service could be provided with the option to obtain seat booking in an alternate transportation service which have agreed to allocate one or more of their seats for sharing/exchange/transfer.
[0025] Having thus described a few particular embodiments of the invention, various alterations, modifications, and improvements will readily occur to those skilled in the art. Such alteration, modifications, and improvements as are made obvious by this disclosure are intended to be part of this description though not expressly stated herein, and are intended to be within the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the foregoing description is by way of example only, and not limiting.
,CLAIMS:I claim:
1. Method for seat sharing, transfer and exchange among transportation service providers comprising the steps of:
a. receiving information of seats booked in the first transportation service on specific date and time which the first transportation service provider wants to share/transfer/exchange;
b. requesting a plurality of alternate transportation service providers to accept said seats in their transportation service;
c. receiving details of the seats and passengers by the alternate transportation services for the seats which the first transportation service wants to share/transfer/exchange;
d. changing the seat status in the first transportation service to sharing/transfer/exchange on request being sent to alternate transportation services to accept the seat;
e. mapping the requested seats of first transportation service against the specific seats of a second transportation service which has received a request for such seats sharing/transfer/exchange;
f. accepting the request for seat sharing/transfer/exchange by the second transportation service; and
g. allocating the approved seats to the travellers of first transportation service and informing the travellers. Such seats will then be unavailable for booking from other sources.
2. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second transportation service may accept one or more request for seat sharing, transfer or exchange but not all.
3. The method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the second transportation service rejects the entire Seat Sharing/Transfer/Exchange request so that there will not be any change in the second transportation service’s seats and occupancy. In such situation Seat Status will be reverted to previous one in first transportation service.
4. A system of seat sharing, transfer and exchange among transportation service providers, comprising:
a processing unit; and software program instructions configured upon execution by the processing unit to maintain the inventory of associated transportation service providers which can be shared/shifted/exchanged between different transportation service providers;
configuring through system administrators the alternate transportation services available for sharing/shifting/exchange of a first transportation service based on date and time of operation of such first transportation service.

5. Method for seat sharing, transfer and exchange among transportation service providers comprising the steps of:
a. receiving seat inventory information of transportation service providers;
b. receiving indication of seat inventory which each transportation service provider wants to earmark for sharing/shifting/exchanging;
c. receiving information of a booking on a first transportation service provider;
d. detecting travel incident impacting the travel service of the traveller;
e. verifying eligibility of traveller for provision of seat in alternate transportation services;
f. checking availability of seats in alternate transportation services;
g. proposing a plurality of alternate transportation service seats which are available for sharing/shifting/exchange to the traveller;
h. selecting the seat by the traveller in a second transportation service; and
i. indicating confirmation of booking to the traveller in the second transportation service.
6. The method as claimed in claim 5, further comprising the step of proposing alternate transportation services even before any travel incident such that the traveller obtain more options with respect of transportation services.
7. The method as claimed in claim 5, wherein the traveller has the ability to filter alternate transportation services options, such that the sets of alternate transportation services are displayed to the traveller with filtering on the basis of expense, duration and popularity.
8. A system of seat sharing, transfer and exchange among transportation service providers, comprising:
a processing unit; and software program instructions configured upon execution by the processing unit to maintain the seat inventory of associated transportation service providers; update a seat inventory in response to a travel incident by:
detecting a travel incident associated with transportation service of the traveller using the processing unit; wherein the travel incident results in an inability of the traveller to utilize the transportation service; verifying eligibility of the traveller and automatically proposing a plurality of seats in alternate transportation services.