Abstract: The method according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention allows managing an inventory of items where a disconnection has been done between the physical item (as offered by a provider) and the marketing offering (which availability and price will be requested by a customer). A physical item can thus be marketed in several marketing offers, and a booking in one of those marketing offers is not directly assigned to a physical item but is allowed to “float” between them, so as to maximize the availability. The method according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention allows multi-days inventory containing more marketing products than physical ones. A preferred embodiment of the present invention provides the possibility to choose between a strong continuity for the bookings (the booking will be refused if it can not be placed continuously for the whole duration of its stay), or a softer continuity that allows possible changes of room type during the stay, while minimizing their numbers.

Abstract: A customer seating system for allocating seats to a group of customers, adapted to calculate a satisfaction value for each available seat, for each customer characterized in, that said system is further adapted to compute a global satisfaction value for each seat, said global satisfaction value is the sum of the previously calculated satisfaction values for the customers of the group, provide seating arrangements according to one of the predetermined geometrical shapes corresponding to the group, determine the group of seats matching said predetermined shape that gives the maximum average global satisfaction value, assign the corresponding seats to the group of customers.