Patent attributes
Reservation processing is achieved whereby suitable reservation prices are presented in accordance with the reservation request of a reservation seeker and the situation regarding earlier-arriving reservations, thereby enabling the reserver to reserve the product he or she desires. When the reservation server receives reservation information from the reservation terminal, it calculates discounted reservation prices based on the number of reservation alternatives designating products desired to be reserved and the reservation fixing time designating a time limit for fixing the reservation, allocates one among the reservation alternatives as a tentative provisional reservation and further allocates the other choices as tentative backup reservations. In the case where, up to the reservation fixing time, there has been a reservation request with respect to the provisional reservation allocation from a later-arriving reservation seeker at a reservation price set at a premium, the provisional reservation allocation is switched to one of the backup reservation allocations and the original provisional reservation allocation is made a reservation allocation of the later-arriving reservation seeker.
