Public-to-Private Reservation Pricing With Guest-Based Minimums
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional e-commerce systems require consumers to purchase multiple tickets at the maximum capacity of an event to ensure exclusivity, which is costly and unpredictable, and hosts often incur losses due to underbooking or unfair compensation.
Innovation Solution
A reservation system that allows customers to convert publicly available experiences to private bookings with flexible pricing models, setting a minimum price that adjusts based on the number of guests, ensuring hosts are compensated and reducing the need for real-time host interaction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If consumers purchase multiple individual tickets at maximum capacity to ensure exclusivity, then private event guarantee is improved, but cost increases prohibitively
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces a vendor as an intermediary between consumers and experiences. Vendors can offer block tickets at discounted rates and manage private event requests, eliminating the need for consumers to purchase expensive individual tickets at maximum capacity. The vendor coordinates with experience providers to reserve experiences privately at lower group rates.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically adjusts pricing and availability based on demand and capacity. Instead of static maximum capacity pricing, the system allows flexible block ticket pricing that adapts to different experience types, time periods, and group sizes, enabling cost-effective private event booking.
2Ease of operation
If consumers book individual tickets without knowing maximum capacity, then booking flexibility is improved, but confidence in private event exclusivity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system provides feedback to consumers about experience capacity and availability status. Vendors can indicate whether an experience is available for private booking, show remaining capacity, and communicate exclusivity status, enabling consumers to make informed decisions without needing to know exact maximum capacities in advance.
3Adaptability or versatility
If hosts manually negotiate private event rates, then pricing flexibility is improved, but time consumption and operational complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
Vendors pre-establish block ticket pricing and private event rate structures before consumer requests. Experience providers set capacity limits and pricing parameters in advance, allowing the system to automatically process private booking requests without real-time negotiation, significantly reducing time consumption while maintaining pricing flexibility.
4Ease of manufacture
If hosts set fixed block ticket prices, then operational simplicity is improved, but ability to compensate for underbooking deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements dynamic pricing that adjusts based on actual booking status and demand. Experience providers can set minimum guaranteed rates and adjust pricing based on how close to capacity bookings are, ensuring fair compensation while maintaining operational simplicity through automated calculations.
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure relates to the implementation of a pricing structure for the private booking of travel experiences. An experience is offered publicly, so as to be bookable by a plurality of customers, each customer booking a subset of a number of available slots for attendees. A customer may convert the experience from a public experience to a private experience by paying at least a minimum price for the private booking. Where the per person cost would exceed the minimum price, the customer pays an additional per guest value. A plurality of differing pricing rules may be applied in correspondence based on the respective numbers of different types of guests attending the event, or differing date/time instances of the experience.