Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer program products for processing exchange requests. An itinerary change request is received to modify at least one attribute of an existing ticket that includes one or more existing ancillary services. A replacement ticket and one or more replacement ancillary services may be identified by identifying a recommendation for a replacement ticket, determining whether the one or more existing ancillary services are available with the replacement ticket, constructing a search filter including category descriptions and a similarity score for the one or more replacement ancillary services, and transmitting the recommendation for the replacement ticket and one or more replacement ancillary services to a user interface.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer program products for processing exchange requests. An itinerary change request is received to modify at least one attribute of an existing ticket that includes one or more existing ancillary services. A replacement ticket and one or more replacement ancillary services may be identified by identifying a recommendation for a replacement ticket, determining whether the one or more existing ancillary services are available with the replacement ticket, constructing a search filter including category descriptions and a similarity score for the one or more replacement ancillary services, and transmitting the recommendation for the replacement ticket and one or more replacement ancillary services to a user interface.

Abstract: An enhanced travel search tool aimed at providing travel opportunities includes a ticket splitter operating from a list of flight connections provided by a front-end flight search engine. The ticket splitter comprises a unit for valuating all ticket partitions generated from the provided list of connection flights and a tree of split criteria updated in a cache for determining the partitions and attributing to each partition a probability value of obtaining a split-ticket solution. The ticket splitter also includes a unit for selecting those of the valuated partitions that have a probability value higher than a defined threshold and provides a sorted list of recommended partitions to a back-end fare search engine to price all the selected partitions including a reference single-ticket solution. Travel search tool offering of travel opportunities is enhanced by automatically including multi-ticket travel solutions.

Abstract: A method of searching for a product or service and presenting the results in a calendar type view; wherein the search is instigated in a request which includes a plurality of parameters, such as a city pair and/or a date, and one or more upsell criteria; the method comprising the steps of: determining via a computer search, results which meet at least one parameter and one or more upsell criteria to thereby determine a flight domain; progressively determining the flight domain via a computer to produce refined results; limiting the number of results in the flight domain based on the at least one parameter, one or more upsell criteria and first one of a plurality of abstraction levels to thereby obtain the refined results, which refined results have lowest prices; and presenting the refined results in a view such as a calendar matrix view.

Abstract: A method for handling large amounts of standard data contained in one or more databases conforming to a standard data model is described. When large amounts of standard data are needed to answer requests of end-users of a software application, the method assumes that a significantly reduced amount of metadata useable by the software application are first built out of the large amounts of standard data. The metadata are stored in an intermediate database of metadata and delivered to the software application through a metadata engine in lieu of the large amounts of standard data. The invention allows software application to consider much larger amounts of standard data to better answer end-user requests in an acceptable elapsed time.

Abstract: An online reservation system including a fare search engine is described. The system comprises a database of published fares, a database of rules attached to the published fares and a fare family solver to categorize the published fares into sets of predefined generic fare families on the basis of the rules attached to the published fares. The fare family solver further comprises a generic partitioning fare family database holding the attributes of each predefined generic fare family allowing to determine to which fare family the published fares belong to. The attributes of each predefined generic fare family are first set up by a fare family composer operated by an administrator of the system. The online reservation system of the invention allows returning to the end-users of online travel service providers travel solutions categorized in families of fares having various ranges of prices and levels of restrictions attached to.

Abstract: A central computer system for processing user travel requests including an outbound journey and an inbound journey, includes elements for calculating and returning information on travel products to user, including sale prices, the central computer system being accessible from at least one user terminal, and including: A travel solutions search engine that can access at least one travel segment database (FDB) and having elements for determining outbound segments and inbound segments that comply with input criteria; A fare search engine having elements to determine the fare associated with possible travel solutions; A travel products grouping engine that applies grouping criteria which include at least one fare equivalence criterion; Elements for extracting the outbound and inbound segments from each group of travel products; Elements for displaying information on at least one group of travel products on the user terminal, separating the outbound segments and inbound segments.

Abstract: Disclosed is a method to operate a pricing engine in response to a request to price a travel product. The method includes processing fare-related data and, in response to the pricing engine invalidating a fare in the fare-related data, automatically invoking an invalidation handler for storing information in an invalidation log associated with the invalidated fare, including a reason for the fare being invalidated. The method further includes processing the information stored in the invalidation log in conjunction with other information and storing in a data repository at least one consolidated view configured to display to a user information descriptive of at least one reason why the fare was invalidated.

Abstract: In one aspect thereof the exemplary embodiments provide a computer-implemented method that includes, in response to a request to redeem customer award units, processing data representing at least one commercial fare in conjunction with data representing at least one conversion rule so as to generate at least one converted redemption fare. The method further includes operating on the at least one converted redemption fare with a faring engine to output at least one travel solution calculated in award units.

Abstract: A method of searching for a entity amongst a plurality of entities, wherein all the entities are linked by at least one criterion in common and have a plurality of data formats, wherein each entity comprises a set of data which can be searched by means of criteria entered by a user; and wherein each entity has a data format; and further wherein a specific one of the data formats defines a standard record format; the method comprising the steps of: determining the data format of an entity; if the data format of the entity does not match the standard record format, passing the entity to a pre-processing engine; if the data format of the entity does match the standard record format, passing standard record format data of the entity to a main processing engine; in the pre-processing engine comparing the entity data format to the standard record format and applying a conversion to the entity set of data; converting the entity set of data to the standard record format based on the conversion to form a converted set

Abstract: An aspect of the exemplary embodiments is an on-line system that includes an interface with system users configured to receive search requests from system users. The system further includes a search engine coupled with the interface. The search engine is configured to respond to a received search request from a user to perform a search that considers priceable criteria and a non-priceable criterion, where a weight of the non-priceable criterion to be accorded during the search relative to the priceable criteria is specified by the user. The search engine is further configured to return search results to the user via the interface. As an example, the search may be a travel-related search, the priceable criteria can include at least a fare amount, and the non-priceable criterion can include a universal criterion such as an ecology-related criterion.

Abstract: A method and system for making roundtrip air flight reservations includes an end-user receiving a response having departure dates with a lowest cost outbound fare for each date and return dates with a lowest cost inbound fare for each date, outbound flight and inbound flight segments each priced with One Way Combinable fares, the One Way Combinable fares can be priced independently of all other One Way Combinable fares (i.e. restriction on covered segment, fare amount can be doubled to price the Round Trip) and can be combined together with any other One Way Combinable fare (i.e. no combinability restriction) in order to form a guaranteed pricing solution regarding IATA regulation both in domestic and international contexts for complex segments (i.e. based on non-direct flights).

Abstract: A method of searching for a entity amongst a plurality of entities, wherein all the entities are linked by at least one criterion in common and have a plurality of data formats, wherein each entity comprises a set of data which can be searched by means of criteria entered by a user; and wherein each entity has a data format; and further wherein a specific one of the data formats defines a standard record format; the method comprising the steps of: determining the data format of an entity; if the data format of the entity does not match the standard record format, passing the entity to a pre-processing engine; if the data format of the entity does match the standard record format, passing standard record format data of the entity to a main processing engine; in the pre-processing engine comparing the entity data format to the standard record format and applying a conversion to the entity set of data; converting the entity set of data to the standard record format based on the conversion to form a converted set

Abstract: An online reservation system including a fare search engine is described. The system includes a database of published fares, a database of rules attached to the published fares and a fare family solver to categorize the published fares into sets of predefined generic fare families on the basis of the rules attached to the published fares. The fare family solver further includes a generic partitioning fare family database holding the attributes of each predefined generic fare family allowing to determine to which fare family the published fares belong to. The attributes of each predefined generic fare family are first set up by a fare family composer operated by an administrator of the system. The online reservation system allows returning to the end-users of online travel service providers travel solutions categorized in families of fares having various ranges of prices and levels of restrictions attached thereto.

Abstract: A global distribution system (GDS) organized for searching travel deals from a plurality of travel vendor fare databases (250) accessible by the GDS (200), includes: a travel multi-vendor search engine (TMVSE) operating on any database of the plurality of travel vendor fare databases; and a travel deal tracker (TDT) associated to the TMVSE (240), the TDT (270) providing directions to the TMVSE to limit the number of required transactions needed to obtain the searched travel deals.

Abstract: An enhanced travel search tool aimed at providing travel opportunities includes a ticket splitter operating from a list of flight connections provided by a front-end flight search engine. The ticket splitter comprises a unit for valuating all ticket partitions generated from the provided list of connection flights and a tree of split criteria updated in a cache for determining the partitions and attributing to each partition a probability value of obtaining a split-ticket solution. The ticket splitter also includes a unit for selecting those of the valuated partitions that have a probability value higher than a defined threshold and provides a sorted list of recommended partitions to a back-end fare search engine to price all the selected partitions including a reference single-ticket solution. Travel search tool offering of travel opportunities is enhanced by automatically including multi-ticket travel solutions.

Abstract: A method of building actual travel fares in a computer, from fare databases, is disclosed. A graph of nodes representing travel destinations is built which comprises edges connecting pairs of nodes. Each edge references a lowest travel fare. Also, a tree of fares is built for each graph edge. Trees comprise at least a root node holding the lowest travel fare of the corresponding graph edge. They possibly include more nodes comprising a context key and an associated travel fare. Trees are organized to have children nodes holding a travel fare equal to or larger than travel fare of a parent node. Thus, less expensive fare paths can efficiently be extracted since graph edges, included in the fare paths, reference the associated trees of fares and are gone through in ascending order of their lowest fare values. A learning entity is used to build and update the trees of fares.

Abstract: A method for handling large amounts of standard data contained in one or more databases conforming to a standard data model is described. When large amounts of standard data are needed to answer requests of end-users of a software application, the method assumes that a significantly reduced amount of metadata useable by the software application are first built out of the large amounts of standard data. The metadata are stored in an intermediate database of metadata and delivered to the software application through a metadata engine in lieu of the large amounts of standard data. The invention allows software application to consider much larger amounts of standard data to better answer end-user requests in an acceptable elapsed time.

Abstract: A central computer system for processing user travel requests including an outbound journey and an inbound journey, includes elements for calculating and returning information on travel products to user, including sale prices, the central computer system being accessible from at least one user terminal, and including: A travel solutions search engine that can access at least one travel segment database (FDB) and having elements for determining outbound segments and inbound segments that comply with input criteria; A fare search engine having elements to determine the fare associated with possible travel solutions; A travel products grouping engine that applies grouping criteria which include at least one fare equivalence criterion; Elements for extracting the outbound and inbound segments from each group of travel products; Elements for displaying information on at least one group of travel products on the user terminal, separating the outbound segments and inbound segments.

Abstract: A method and system for making roundtrip air flight reservations includes an end-user receiving a response having departure dates with a lowest cost outbound fare for each date and return dates with a lowest cost inbound fare for each date, outbound flight and inbound flight segments each priced with One Way Combinable fares, the One Way Combinable fares can be priced independently of all other One Way Combinable fares (i.e. restriction on covered segment, fare amount can be doubled to price the Round Trip) and can be combined together with any other One Way Combinable fare (i.e. no combinability restriction) in order to form a guaranteed pricing solution regarding IATA regulation both in domestic and international contexts for complex segments (i.e. based on non-direct flights).