The "YuuZuu" reservation method

The "YuuZuu" reservation method is a new reservation method that enables service providers to sell service items to as many as customers by coordinating needs of customers some of whom have flexible options for items to buy while some of whom desperately need specific items.
(A patent was applied for by AIST in Japan and overseas [Europe, USA, China, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong])

Problems to be solved

Let's suppose that there are three flights from Haneda airport to Fukuoka airport between 8 and 9 o'clock as shown in the top figure on the right side. A customer (the first customer) just booked a seat on 8:10 flight without a strong preference; he is fine with either 8:10 flight or 8:30 flight. Then a couple (the second customer) made a reservation on 8:30 flight without a strong preference; they are fine with either 8:30 flight or 8:45 flight. At this point, availability of the seats is shown in the second figure on the right side.

Then a party of four (the third customer) tries to reserve 8:10 flight. They must use this flight to make their connections. However, conventional reservation system can't provide the requested seats to them because only three seats are left on 8:10 flight. This kind of situation causes a loss of sales chances and low operating rate to service providers while customers waste their time as they should try to make a reservation with other air flight company.

The first customer is fine with 8:30 flight, and the second customer is fine with 8:45 flight. If the reservation system can manage the customers' preferences appropriately, it can provide 8:10 flight to the third customer by moving reservations of the first and the second customers. This is the "YuuZuu" reservation system methods that can manage the customers' requests and allocate suitable reservations to as many as customers.

The DREAM Reservation System

The DREAM reservation system, which is a web-based versatile reservation system, has been developed as an implementation of the "YuuZuu" reservation method.



As shown above, the DREAM reservation system consists of three components; the core part called FREE (Flexible REservation Engine) as a versatile reservation task engine, SPOT (Simulation-based Price Optimization Tool) as an optimization tool to decide the optimum reservation price, and TRADE (Transaction Data Evaluator) as a reservation analyzer to create simulation data for optimization.

Regular reservation	The first is the regular type of reservation which is the same as the traditional one. A customer selects a specific item from available items and the reservation is just fixed.
Flexible reservation with a discount price	The second is the flexible reservation. A customer is required to specify more than two items as candidates of the reservation. The most preferred one is stored as a tentative reservation in the database while the other candidates are stored as spare reservations. The customer accepts any of candidates, a tentative reservation or spare reservations, as far as it is fixed by a specific time point. The reservation allocation ("YuuZuu") that is explained above becomes possible only with this type of reservations. Therefore, service providers need to set up the discount prices reflecting the number of candidates in order to make customers specify as many as candidates.
Picky reservation with a premium price	The last one is the picky reservation. A late-arriving customer gets an item from tentative reservations that are already made by other customers. The customer is charged a premium price in return for this arrangement.

As a result, rational reservation prices can naturally be decided reflecting the strength or degree of exigency of the customer's needs for a specific reservation by creating the flexible reservation and the picky reservation.