Method and Apparatus for Improved Control Over On-Line Reservations of Rental Vehicles

• US 20130166331A1
• Filed: 07/30/2012
• Published: 06/27/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: The Crawford Group Incorporated (Jack Taylor Family Voting Trust U A D 4 14 99)
• Original Assignee: The Crawford Group Incorporated (Jack Taylor Family Voting Trust U A D 4 14 99)
• Inventors: Fitzgerald, Neil, Belanger, Hugues, Boruff, Kelli, Tucker, Paul, Everson, Jeffrey Lee
• Application Number:
  US13/561,830
• Publication Number:
  US 20130166331A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/5
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0645 Rental transactions; Leasing transactions

Abstract

Disclosed herein are techniques for improved control over how customers can interact with a rental vehicle reservation booking site, including user interfaces for defining customer accounts and user interfaces for defining promotional offers with respect to rental vehicle reservations.

Claims

1. A method of controlling a reservation account for a repeat customer of a reservation booking server site, the method comprising:

providing a user interface through which a user can define one or more parameters for a reservation account that is associated with a repeat customer;

receiving a parameter definition from the user through the user interface; and

storing the received parameter definition with the reservation account for subsequent retrieval and processing when the repeat customer accesses the server site.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the reservation booking server site is a rental vehicle reservation booking server site.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the server site includes a plurality of customer-interactive pages through which the customer submits reservation data to book a reservation transaction, and wherein the providing step comprises:

providing a graphical user interface (GUI) through which the user can define at least one parameter that controls the appearance of the customer-interactive pages presented to the customer.

4. The method of claim 2 wherein the server site includes a plurality of customer-interactive pages through which the customer submits reservation data to book a reservation transaction, and wherein the providing step comprises:

providing a graphical user interface (GUI) through which the user can define at least one parameter that controls what reservation options are available to the customer.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the reservation account is a corporate account.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the reservation account is a customer account.

7. A method of controlling a promotional offer of a reservation booking server site, the method comprising:

providing a user interface through which a user can define one or more parameters for a promotional offer stored in a database;

receiving a parameter definition from the user through the user interface; and

storing the received parameter definition with the promotional offer for subsequent retrieval and processing when a customer seeks to take advantage of the promotional offer.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the reservation booking server site is a rental vehicle reservation booking server site.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein the server site includes a plurality of customer-interactive pages through which the customer submits reservation data to book a reservation transaction in accordance with the promotional offer, and wherein the providing step comprises:

providing a graphical user interface (GUI) through which the user can define at least one parameter that controls the appearance of the customer-interactive pages presented to the customer when the customer seeks to take advantage of the promotional offer.

10. The method of claim 8 wherein the server site includes a plurality of customer-interactive pages through which the customer submits reservation data to book a reservation transaction in accordance with the promotional offer, and wherein the providing step comprises:

providing a graphical user interface (GUI) through which the user can define at least one parameter that controls what reservation options are available to the customer when the customer seeks to take advantage of the promotional offer.