This invention relates generally to computerized travel planning systems.
Travel planning systems are used to produce itineraries and prices by selecting suitable travel units from databases concerning geographic scheduling and pricing information. In particular, travel planning systems that operate over the Internet are known. Some computer travel planning systems, such as Internet sites, generally produce a set of planning options, or itineraries for the traveller to consider. These options are often in the form of a single list of the possible itineraries from which the traveller may select. Such a display approach makes it difficult to clearly compare, discriminate, focus, and assimilate criteria and information that are likely to be important to the traveller.
According to an aspect of the invention, a graphical user interface for a travel planning system includes a tabular region of the graphical user interface that displays summarized travel options and comprises a plurality of cells that act as controls and a second region that displays selected travel options resulting from filtering a set of travel options in accordance with a control actuated in the tabular region.
According to a further aspect of the invention, a method for displaying travel options includes compartmentalizing travel options into bins according to a set of criteria. The invention has compartmentalizing travel options into ‘bins’, according to a set of criteria through displaying the resulting bins in a table.
One or more of the following advantages may be provided by one or more aspect of the present invention.
With a summary table as part of a user interface to the travel planning system, travellers can select individual bins inorder to focus on a subset of travel options that they are interested in. Selecting an individual cell displays a secondary level of information about the travel options that are represented in that cell. In this secondary level of information about individual travel options, each travel option has a mechanism for selecting and displaying the details of that specific travel option. The summary table can appears in the top frame of a web browser.
Referring to
The scheduler process 16 provides itineraries to a faring process 18. The faring process provides a set of pricing solutions by finding valid fares corresponding to the itineraries produced by the scheduler process 16. The faring process 18 also validates the fares for inclusion in a set of pricing solutions. The information to have the server produce the set of pricing solutions is obtain from a user entering data in a graphical user interface 41 displayed on a display 40 as will be described below. In addition, the set of pricing solutions are also displayed to the user through the graphical user interface.
Referring now to
The web page 50 includes a query table 52 which is a tab table 54 here comprised of three tabbed regions 54a-54c. The first tab is labeled one-way, the second tab round trip 54b and the third tab multi-segment 54c. The multi-segment tab is shown and is substantially the same as the other tabs except that the multi-segment tab allows the user to enter data for multiple segments of a flight by allowing the user to construct a new query segment region. For example, as shown in
The web page 50 also allows for entry of passenger information such as the number of adults, seniors, children and infants which may be important in determining the fare price for a ticket. The web page 50 also allows a user to have the server process check seat availability on designated flights. With the check availability box activated, the server process 16 will return travel options for which there is seat availability.
Referring now to
As shown in
A general procedure to construct the graphical user interface is given below:
If the travel system operates on a pricing graph, the links are hyperlinks to an enumeration algorithm such as described in the copending application which can sort through a pricing graph, as described in the above application, and return a set of travel options which correspond to the intersection of here the airline represented in the column and the travel option represented in the selected row. Otherwise the links activate routines to sort through a list of travel options.
Thus, for example, selecting Delta Airlines and non-stop flights corresponding to cell 75a which has value of $378 will bring up all non-stop options on Delta Airlines, e.g., no stops in any segment and depict the top 30 of those results in the results frame 76. Thus, the links in the table 72 are used to control the display of travel options in the results frame 76. The results frame 76 includes a plurality of results, here the top 30 results are typically shown, arranged in a table with a hyperlink denoted as “details” which, when activated, brings up details of the travel option such as shown in
Returning to
As shown in
As shown in
The summary table 72 segments or compartmentalizes travel options into bins, according to criteria that the user might use to select a specific travel option. Each dimension of the table has a travel criterion associated with it (for example, a two-dimensional table would have a criterion along the horizontal rows of the table, and a criterion along the vertical columns of the table). In addition, another, different criterion is represented in the cells of the table. The process for producing a summary table, given a set of travel options and a set of criteria, is given below. For example, other criteria could be used within the interior cells or at the edges of the table.
The graphical user interface is populated by obtaining a list of query-specific travel options. For each criteria the process will enumerate bins for this criteria, and for each travel option T, the process places the travel option T into some bin. Given the bins computed the process computes intersections of bins to determine what bins go in what cells of the summary table. The process generates and displays the summary table with the determined information.
It is to be understood that while the invention has been described in conjunction with the detailed description thereof, the foregoing description is intended to illustrate and not limit the scope of the invention, which is defined by the scope of the appended claims. Other aspects, advantages, and modifications are within the scope of the following claims.
This application is a continuation application of and claims the benefit of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/431,679 filed Nov. 11, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,801,226.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20040236616 A1 | Nov 2004 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 09431679 | Nov 1999 | US |
Child | 10697823 | US |