Methods and systems for transacting travel-related goods and services

• US 9,286,629 B2
• Filed: 03/14/2012
• Issued: 03/15/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/14/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amgine Technologies (US), Inc.
• Original Assignee: Amgine Technologies (US), Inc.
• Inventors: Miller, Jonathan David, Miller, Harold Roy, Seider, Steven Mark
• Primary Examiner(s): Arjomandi, Noosha
• Application Number:
  US13/419,989
• Publication Number:
  US 20120239669A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,462 Days
• Field of Search: 707/755
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/243 Natural language query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

Provided are methods and systems for efficient matching of suppliers and customers for travel-related and other types of goods and services. These methods and systems are based on an exchange or market concept, in which a computer system performs matching between different parties. Specifically, an exchange system may compare customers'"'"' requests with suppliers'"'"' content records. In certain embodiments, an exchange system sends notifications of customers'"'"' requests to suppliers based on criteria presented by the suppliers. Users'"'"' requests and/or vendors'"'"' content records may be processed using natural language parser to determine appropriate components for searches and matches. This substantially improves efficiency of the exchange system and makes it more user friendly as users and vendors may present different terms in their respective searches and entries. An exchange system may include a pattern recognition component and semantic natural language parser to perform this function.

Claims

1. A method for publishing content in an exchange system for viewing by customers, the method comprising:

receiving content records from systems of a plurality of suppliers of services or goods and defining a category of service or good for each of the content records, at least a portion of the content records having a different category from one another;

defining metadata associated with each of the content records;

publishing the content records and metadata in a public domain of the exchange system, the public domain is viewable and searchable by one or more consumers;

processing the metadata to create one or more natural language parser (NLP) components;

receiving a text string request written in a natural language from a consumer;

parsing the natural language request using one or more of the NLP components to;

search the natural language request for keywords and phrases;

determine a good or service category for each keyword or phrase, wherein searching comprises using an equivalence class of phrases to match at least a portion of the keywords and phrases to a content category when the keywords and phrases do not exactly match any category of the content records stored in the exchange system; and

search the exchange system for metadata of content records that correspond to the parsed keywords and phrases, using the good or service categories determined for each of the keywords and phrases;

constructing a search query in a format that is supported by the exchange system from the request;

transmitting results of the search query to the consumer; and

based on the results of the search query, posting a request for services or goods to the exchange system, wherein the exchange system is operable to send notifications to one or more suppliers selected from the plurality of suppliers of services or goods based on one or more categories included in the request.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the categories of the content records are selected from a list comprising an air ticket category, a hotel category, a car rental category, and a tour category.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the metadata comprises one or more value sets corresponding to one or more selected metadata tags.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the metadata is stored in a metadata database of the exchange system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more natural language parser (NLP) components are created based on the category of the content records and/or one or more tags of the metadata.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the metadata further comprises retrieving additional attributes associated with the content category.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein processing the metadata further comprises defining an equivalence class of phrases corresponding to the one or more natural language parser (NLP) components.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein defining the equivalence class of phrases comprises extracting one or more data points from the metadata, the one or more data points are selected from a group consisting of a metadata record name, a metadata record value category, and a metadata record value set.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the exchange system is configured to add a new phrase to equivalence classes when encountering a metadata record category.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein parsing the request comprises splitting the request into multiple line items, decoding each of the multiple lines, determining a category of the request, and matching a node to the category.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the search query constructed from the request is an SQL search expression supported by a database of the exchange system.

12. A system for publishing content in an exchange system for viewing by customers, the system comprising:

a processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions, the instructions executable by the processor to perform a method comprising;

receiving content records from systems of a plurality of suppliers of services or goods and defining a category of service or good for each of the content records, at least a portion of the content records having a different category from one another;

defining metadata associated with each of the content records;

publishing the content records and metadata in a public domain of the exchange system, the public domain is viewable and searchable by one or more consumers;

processing the metadata to create one or more natural language parser (NLP) components;

receiving a text string request written in a natural language from a consumer;

parsing the natural language request using one or more of the NLP components to;

search the natural language request for keywords and phrases;

determine a good or service category for each keyword or phrase, wherein searching comprises using an equivalence class of phrases to match at least a portion of the keywords and phrases to a content category when the keywords and phrases do not exactly match any category of the content records stored in the exchange system; and

search the exchange system for metadata of content records that correspond to the parsed keywords and phrases, using the good or service categories determined for each of the keywords and phrases;

constructing a search query in a format that is supported by the exchange system from the request;

transmitting results of the search query to the consumer; and

based on the results of the search query, posting a request for services or goods to the exchange system, wherein the exchange system is operable to send notifications to one or more suppliers selected from the plurality of suppliers of services or goods based on one or more categories included in the request.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the categories of the content records is selected from a list comprising an air ticket category, a hotel category, a car rental category, and a tour category.

14. The system of claim 12, wherein the metadata comprises one or more value sets corresponding to one or more selected metadata tags.

15. The system of claim 12, wherein the metadata is stored in a metadata database of the exchange system.

16. The system of claim 12, wherein the one or more natural language parser (NLP) components are created based on the categories of the content records and/or one or more tags of the metadata.