Traveler tracking system

• US 10,134,098 B2
• Filed: 11/11/2014
• Issued: 11/20/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 11/11/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nomadix, Inc. (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nomadix, Inc. (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation)
• Inventors: Farrar, Christopher, Reed, Charles, Mercier, Nicolas, Reed, Kenneth
• Primary Examiner(s): Vanderhorst, Maria V
• Application Number:
  US14/538,580
• Publication Number:
  US 20150134451A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,470 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0255 based on user history
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/12 Hotels or restaurants
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/781 Centralised allocation of resources
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/808 User-type aware

Abstract

Systems and methods described herein may include a memory and a computing a system in communication with said memory. The computing system may be configured to receive data from network management systems. In one embodiment, the network management system includes a network gateway. Users at venues may access external network resources using the network management system. Further, the network management systems may extract device identifiers from network packets sent from user devices to request access to external network resources. In some embodiments, the network management system may provide transmission control protocol handshake completion data to user devices. In some embodiments, the computing system also receives one or more attributes associated with the venue, user data associated with the user device, and connection data associated with communication between the user device and said external network resource.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a memory;

a computing system in communication with said memory configured to receive data from network management systems configured to receive plurality of connection requests from a plurality of user devices, said network management systems further configured to provide transmission control protocol handshake completion data responsive to said connection requests, wherein the data received comprises, for each user device of the plurality of user devices;

a device identifier included in one or more packets sent from the respective user device requesting access to an external network resource using a respective network management system at a venue;

one or more attributes associated with the venue;

user data associated with the user device; and

connection data associated with communications between the user device and said external network resource;

the computing system including one or more hardware processors, wherein the one or more hardware processors are further configured to;

link a first user to a first device identifier based on the stored user data and stored device identifiers;

determine a plurality of hotels visited by the first user in a time period based at least on the first device identifier;

determine a first number of visits of the first user in a first hotel type of the plurality of hotels based at least on the first device identifier;

determine a second number of visits of the first user in a second hotel type of the plurality of hotels based at least on the first device identifier;

automatically link a second device identifier of a new computing device used by the first user with the first number of visits and the second number of visits, wherein the second device identifier is automatically linked with the first user based on correlating a MAC address of a secondary device also associated with the first user;

continue tracking the first user based on the second device identifier;

determine a first loyalty metric for a first hotel type based on the determined first number of visits, the determined second number of visits, and the continued tracking of the first user; and

transmit an alert to a hotel management system based on the determined first loyalty metric.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said device identifier comprises a MAC address.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein said one or more attributes associated with the venue comprise at least one of geographical location of the venue, class identifier of the venue, distance of the venue from the airport, number of conference rooms, average price of rooms at the venue.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said connection data comprises a list of network resources requested from the user device.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein said user data comprises at least one of a loyalty identifier associated with the venue and an email address associated with the user.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to calculate a frequency of travel of a user based in part on the received data.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to determine a relationship between a first user using a first user device and a second user using a second user device based in part on the received data.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to generate a travel map based on received data.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to determine a next travel destination of a user based in part on the received data.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to determine out of pattern visits.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to send content to one of said network management systems for injection into a user requested content based in part on the received data.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to generate an alert in response to detecting a first user at a first venue from the received data.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein said computing system is further configured to detect clusters based in part on said one or more attributes associated with the venue included in the received data.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein said computing system is further configured to:

compare one or more attributes of venues visited by a user with one or more detected clusters; and

determine a probability score that a user belongs to that cluster based at least on the said comparison.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein said computing system is further configured to generate content configured to be injected by the network management system based on said probability score.