Calendar-Based Travel Option Aggregation System
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Users face inefficiencies in finding travel options as they must manually navigate multiple websites to compare and select travel plans, requiring significant effort and resources.
Innovation Solution
A system that accesses user calendar data to generate and present customized travel options by making API requests to service providers, aggregating results, and inferring user preferences to offer tailored suggestions, reducing the need for users to search across multiple platforms.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If users manually search for travel options across multiple websites, then they can compare and select travel plans, but they require significant effort and resources
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a travel planner system as an intermediary that automatically retrieves calendar event data, queries multiple service provider APIs, aggregates travel options, and presents customized recommendations. This mediator eliminates the need for users to manually navigate multiple websites by centralizing the search and comparison function in a single integrated system.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs self-service by automatically extracting travel needs from calendar events, independently querying service providers for available options, and generating personalized recommendations without requiring active user participation in the search process. The system serves itself by autonomously completing the entire travel planning workflow.
2Ease of operation
If users manually search for travel options across multiple websites, then they can compare and select travel plans, but they require significant user inputs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts essential travel parameters (destination, dates, event type) directly from calendar event data, eliminating the need for users to manually input search criteria. The system extracts relevant information from existing calendar events and uses it to automatically construct search queries for travel options.
Solution Approach 2:
The travel planner system serves multiple functions: it acts as a calendar integration layer, a data aggregation hub, an API coordination system, and a recommendation engine. This multi-functional approach consolidates what would otherwise require multiple separate tools and manual operations into a single unified system.
3Productivity
If the system aggregates travel options from multiple service providers, then it provides comprehensive recommendations, but it increases network traffic and computing resources
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing API connections with service providers and pre-configuring authentication parameters. When a calendar event is detected, the system can immediately query available options without requiring real-time authentication or connection establishment, reducing the computational overhead of each individual travel planning request.
Data Source
AI summary
Example embodiments provide a system and method for providing user interfaces comprising calendar-based suggestions of single user, single event travel options. The system accesses calendar data of the user, which indicates an event that the user is scheduled to attend, and extracts data for the event from the calendar data. The system constructs an application program interface (API) request by incorporating the extracted data for the event as one or more search criteria in the API request. The system transmits the API request to a provider server of at least one service provider. In response, the system receives results from the provider server(s), which comprise options determined to be compatible with the event based on the one or more search criteria in the API request. The system causes presentation of at least some of the options from the results determined to be compatible with the event.