Customers Profile
Hotelcity.com
www.hotelcity.com

Our Solution
The system provides two basic services: Server Side services and Client Side services. The client side services include web-based interfaces that the administrator and travelers will use when they want to carry out their specific tasks. The administrator will access the system by using an assigned user id and password.

The server-side services will allow the client-side services to access and modify the data in the Database. They would also allow dynamic creation of the ‘pages’ the traveler sees (except for the static pages for individual hotels that provide information about the facilities they provide) while using the system based on this data. The database holds information in various tables related to:

• Hotel information
• Room rates
  
• Room allotment details
  
• Traveler details
  
• Payment details
  
• Currency conversion details

Methodology
Being a web based system, we followed industry standard HTML version 4.0 to design front-end for the system. We did not use any HTML editors for designing the screens, as there were no professional quality design tools available for Red Hat Linux 5.2 at that time.

Benefits
The system provides the following benefits:

• Automated various business processes like adding new hotels, rooms, room rates, sending confirmation, managing his customers
• Smooth and secure transactions between the client and its customers
• Generating various analysis/what-if reports for quick decision making

Introduction
The Hotel City Reservation Management System is an internet-based system that allows Hotel City to handle its day-to-day operations. The system provides enhanced backend functionality over the web-based system that Hotel City was using for the task. The purpose of the system is to centrally manage most of HotelCity’s day-to-day administration activities.

Situation
The system provides web-based interfaces for two types of users: travelers and the administrator. It allows travelers to make hotel bookings over the Internet and provides the following facilities:

• Allow browsing of the hotels available
• Allow selection of a given hotel for booking a room
• specify dates for which the room needs to be booked
  
• Obtain confirmation regarding the availability of a room for a given set of dates
  
• Provide payment information

The system will:

• Work as an Internet based solution.
  
• Allow Hotel City to automate most of the processes involved in obtaining, maintaining and confirming bookings for hotel rooms franchised by it
  
• Allow Hotel City to generate different types of reports related to the rooms it is handling, the bookings that take place, rooms to be cancelled etc.
  
• Allow Hotel City to provide services to deal with travelers’ hotel requirements.

Features
The users of the proposed system are:

1. The Hotel City Administrator
2. Hotel City staff (to do bookings for travelers)
3. Any traveler interested in booking a room

User Interface
The system has provided a user-friendly interface and followed general interface guidelines for web based clients so that they are easy to use and manage.

Traveler-end Features

• Obtain information about hotels and rooms in the hotel
• Facilitate bookings of a room for a given set of dates
• Facilitate cancellations of room bookings
• Display payment charges for the room booked
• Obtain credit card information
• Deliver confirmation messages for room bookings
• Suggest alternate hotels/rooms in case of non-availability of a requested room in a specified hotel.

Administrator-end Features
The system will allow the Administrator to generate reports like:

• Rooms booked
  
• Bookings cancelled
  
• Requests for rooms not satisfied
  
• Rooms to be ‘surrendered’ to hotels
  
• Commission to be paid to traveler sites
  
• It also allows him to:
  
• Modify details related to availability of rooms to be booked
  
• Provide a link to a pre-created html file that provides a description of the hotel and its facilities.
  
• Rooms and their rates (both normal and spESNal rates)
  
• Provide two rates -- normal and spESNal rates (for spESNal days of the year) for the different types of rooms available in a hotel.
  
• Add/modify/delete the list of traveler sites and the commissions payable to each site for each room booking.
  
• Provide the conversion rates applicable to convert Euro prices to US Dollar prices.

Technology Solution

• Redhat Linux 5.2 with Apache as web server
  
• mSQL as backend database
• Lite as scripting language

Conclusion
This system helped hotelcity.com automate their entire business processes, which allowed them to run their business dynamically/interactively and allowed them take decisions more quickly.