Travel Reservation System Using Common Object Model
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Solution Overview
Problem
The travel industry faces challenges in providing a one-stop shopping experience for customers due to the need for significant integration efforts among various travel providers, each with their own interfaces and product models, making it difficult to communicate and offer a unified platform for booking multiple travel-related products and services.
Innovation Solution
A travel reservation system utilizing a common object model to represent disparate travel products and services, allowing for efficient integration with third-party providers through a single interface and translator modules to convert between common and provider-specific models, enabling a unified search and booking process across different product types.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If travel providers use their own provider-specific interfaces and product models, then each provider maintains independence and control over their own systems, but integration complexity increases significantly when trying to create a unified one-stop shopping platform
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a common object model as an intermediary layer between provider-specific interfaces and the unified reservation system. This mediator translates between different provider models and a standardized common model, enabling integration without requiring providers to change their own systems. The common object model acts as the mediating structure that facilitates communication while preserving provider independence.
Solution Approach 2:
The common object model serves as a universal interface that can represent multiple different provider-specific product models. Rather than requiring separate integration logic for each provider, the system uses a single common model that can accommodate various travel products and services from different providers, reducing overall integration complexity.
2Ease of operation
If travel providers integrate through travel consolidators or alliances, then a one-stop shopping experience can be provided, but significant integration efforts are required for each provider to adapt their interfaces and product models
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary action by establishing the common object model framework in advance, with pre-defined translation mechanisms between provider-specific models and the common model. This preliminary setup eliminates the need for time-consuming integration efforts when new providers join the network, as the translation layer is already in place.
Solution Approach 2:
The common object model serves as a pre-established intermediary that enables rapid integration. Rather than requiring providers to undergo lengthy integration processes with consolidators, the common model provides an immediate, standardized interface that can accommodate new providers quickly while maintaining the one-stop shopping experience.
3Adaptability or versatility
If a unified reservation system integrates multiple provider-specific models, then comprehensive product availability can be queried, but the system complexity increases to manage multiple interfaces and translation mechanisms
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complexity of provider-specific interfaces into separate translation layers, isolating them from the core reservation system. By taking out the provider-specific model complexities and handling them through dedicated translation mechanisms, the core system can focus on the common object model, reducing overall system complexity while maintaining comprehensive product coverage.
Solution Approach 2:
The common object model provides a universal representation that can handle multiple provider-specific product models through a single standardized interface. This universality reduces system complexity by eliminating the need for separate handling logic for each provider, while still enabling comprehensive product availability queries across all integrated providers.
Data Source
AI summary
A travel reservation system having a common object model for representing disparate travel products and services. In general, the system may provide efficient integration relationships between the travel reservation system and various third-party travel providers by using a single common model and interface structure, regardless of the type of product or service being offered. The system may include translators for converting travel products and services conforming to the common object model into a corresponding provider-specific model, and vice versa. In some implementations, the use of the common object model may allow the system to provide a set of query results covering multiple different product types in response to a single query input.