Methods and systems for transacting travel-related goods and services

摘要

Provided are methods and systems for efficient matching of suppliers and customers for travel-related and other types of goods and services. These methods and systems are based on an exchange or market concept, in which a computer system performs matching between different parties. Specifically, an exchange system may compare customers' requests with suppliers' content records. In certain embodiments, an exchange system sends notifications of customers' requests to suppliers based on criteria presented by the suppliers. Users' requests and/or vendors' content records may be processed using natural language parser to determine appropriate components for searches and matches. This substantially improves efficiency of the exchange system and makes it more user friendly as users and vendors may present different terms in their respective searches and entries. An exchange system may include a pattern recognition component and semantic natural language parser to perform this function.

主权项

1. A method for publishing content in an exchange system for viewing by customers, the method comprising:
receiving content records from systems of a plurality of suppliers of services or goods and defining a category of service or good for each of the content records, at least a portion of the content records having a different category from one another; defining metadata associated with each of the content records; publishing the content records and metadata in a public domain of the exchange system, the public domain is viewable and searchable by one or more consumers; processing the metadata to create one or more natural language parser (NLP) components; receiving a text string request written in a natural language from a consumer;
parsing the natural language request using one or more of the NLP components to:search the natural language request for keywords and phrases;determine a good or service category for each keyword or phrase, wherein searching comprises using an equivalence class of phrases to match at least a portion of the keywords and phrases to a content category when the keywords and phrases do not exactly match any category of the content records stored in the exchange system; andsearch the exchange system for metadata of content records that correspond to the parsed keywords and phrases, using the good or service categories determined for each of the keywords and phrases; constructing a search query in a format that is supported by the exchange system from the request; transmitting results of the search query to the consumer; and based on the results of the search query, posting a request for services or goods to the exchange system, wherein the exchange system is operable to send notifications to one or more suppliers selected from the plurality of suppliers of services or goods based on one or more categories included in the request.