Method and apparatus for customer direct on-line reservation of rental vehicles including deep-linking
First Claim
1. A method comprising:
- using a processor, (1) storing an account that is associated with a customer, the account having a rate for a rental vehicle corresponding to the rental vehicle reservation transaction, (2) receiving data corresponding to a deep-link Uniform Resource Locator (“
URL”
) from a customer computer, the deep-link URL comprising a domain name and a portion following the domain name, the portion following the domain name comprising encoded data representative of (i) the account and (ii) a parameter for a rental vehicle reservation, (3) processing the deep-link URL encoded data to determine (i) the account corresponding thereto and (ii) the rental vehicle reservation parameter corresponding thereto, (4) retrieving the rate from the determined account, (5) providing the customer computer with deep-link access to a website page from a rental vehicle reservation booking website in response to the receiving and processing steps without requiring the customer computer to access at least a home page of the website such that the website page is configured to solicit input from the customer regarding a rental vehicle reservation transaction, the rental vehicle reservation transaction having (i) an applicable rate that is pre-set in accordance with the retrieved rate, and (ii) an applicable parameter that is pre-set to match the rental vehicle reservation parameter determined from the encoded data, and (6) creating a rental vehicle reservation in accordance with the pre-set rate, the pre-set parameter, and other data provided by the customer computer for the rental vehicle reservation transaction.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method of processing a reservation transaction between a customer and reservation-booking entity via a computer network inter-connecting a customer computer with an automated reservation transaction processor, the reservation transaction requiring submission of at least three different types of reservation data from the customer for successful completion thereof, each reservation data type having one of a plurality of different values, wherein each reservation data type value is dependent upon other reservation data type values, the method including presenting an initial page for data value entry for a plurality of reservation data types, accepting for partial data entry data values for less than all of said reservation data types, and determining, on the basis of the interdependence of the different data values for the different reservation data types, a list of acceptable data values for any un-entered reservation data types. Also, the processor provides the customer with a less than full page summary section on many of the reservation booking pages, the summary section including a list of submitted data values for the reservation transaction and an edit link associated with each listed data value that is selectable to initiate a revision of its associated data value. Further, the present invention supports promotional deep-linking, promotion reservation with notification upon customer violation of the promotion rules, corporate account deep-linking, URL-based deep-linking, travel agent commission tracking, and various other features.
446 Citations
5 Claims
-
1. A method comprising:
using a processor, (1) storing an account that is associated with a customer, the account having a rate for a rental vehicle corresponding to the rental vehicle reservation transaction, (2) receiving data corresponding to a deep-link Uniform Resource Locator (“
URL”
) from a customer computer, the deep-link URL comprising a domain name and a portion following the domain name, the portion following the domain name comprising encoded data representative of (i) the account and (ii) a parameter for a rental vehicle reservation, (3) processing the deep-link URL encoded data to determine (i) the account corresponding thereto and (ii) the rental vehicle reservation parameter corresponding thereto, (4) retrieving the rate from the determined account, (5) providing the customer computer with deep-link access to a website page from a rental vehicle reservation booking website in response to the receiving and processing steps without requiring the customer computer to access at least a home page of the website such that the website page is configured to solicit input from the customer regarding a rental vehicle reservation transaction, the rental vehicle reservation transaction having (i) an applicable rate that is pre-set in accordance with the retrieved rate, and (ii) an applicable parameter that is pre-set to match the rental vehicle reservation parameter determined from the encoded data, and (6) creating a rental vehicle reservation in accordance with the pre-set rate, the pre-set parameter, and other data provided by the customer computer for the rental vehicle reservation transaction.- View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5)
Specification