TRIP PLANNER OPTIMIZING TRAVEL ITINERARY SELECTION CONFORMING TO AN INDIVIDUALIZED TRAVEL POLICY

摘要

A travel planner process is disclosed. A trip request including a traveler, time parameters and an origin and a destination for the traveler is specified. Computerized access to a machine-interrogatable database of tariffs, rules and seat availability for flights is provided. Computerized access to a traveler file (22) for the traveler is also provided. The traveler file (22) references a number of policy records. The database is machine-interrogated without manual intervention to automatically find candidate itineraries each of which conforms to the trip request. The candidate itineraries are for the lowest valid fares obtained by examination of all possible connecting flights and all possible fares. Each candidate itinerary has one or more flights each of which is valid under the tariffs, rules and seat availability in the database. A policy record referenced by the traveler file for the traveler is machine-identified without manual intervention. The identified travel policy record is machine-applied without manual intervention to the candidate itineraries to leave as remaining candidate itineraries only those which conform to the identified policy record. One of the remaining candidate itineraries is selected and has a plurality of trip legs and a fare. The fare of the selected itinerary is determined, and an apportioned fare for each trip leg of the selected itinerary is determined based on the fare of the selected itinerary.