                            ACCOMMODATA (C) 1993,1994            [history.txt]

                                   
                                   History File
                                   


We hope you find this of interest.....


 September 1992 - December 1993

	Studied the market for competetive products
	Evaluated the potentiual for a "computerised hotel directory"


 January 1993 - February 1993

	"Played" with developing the system, evaluating the opportunities for 
	worthwhile functions and to determine the expected file sizes based on
	an estimated number of participating hotels to ensure the system would
	be useable by a large number of PC owners


 March 1993 - June 1993

	Development of the program


 July 1993 - September 1993

	Sent "beta" copies of the program to friends and relatives for
	evaluation, fault finding and recommendations


 October 1993
	
	Approchaed the English Tourist Board for marketing support, but they
	said that they had seen this kind of system before from other
	companies and individuals and it had failed to impress them - "We
	cannot see how the program can be of benefit to the hotels".....
	
	Won the support of the British Hospitality Association who helped
	with the final specification and marketing plans for the program (and
	continue to do so at present - June 1994)


 October 1993 - April 1994

	Implemented a number of changes to the program based on the feedback
	from the beta users and also from some hotels who have been approached
	to provide advise from "their side of the fence".  In particular the
	search process was altered, resulting in a faster search time at the
	expense of file size and support for conference location was added

	At this stage we started to approach hotels to invite their
	participation.  Initial response was poor due to rogue companies who
	offer a similar service but do not actually have a system to provide
	to the user!  They usually just invoice the hotel and threaten them
	with court action - these people have made our life very difficult.
	This aside, in the 6 months of prospecting we attracted a total of 
	just under 2500 hotels onto the system.

	
 May 1994

	First advertisements for prospective users of the system and the first
	shipments of release 1.1

                              _____________________


Notes on release numbers


We intend to change the release number on two specific occasions;

1.	The digit to the right of the full stop will change when a reasonable
	number of hotels have been added or their details changed.  So we
	expect the next number to be 1.2, then 1.3 through to 1.9, 1.10, 1.11
	and so on.

2.	The digit to the left of the full stop will change when a change is
	made to the program itself.  So the next major release will be 2.1.

Bug fixes and minor alterations to the background code will be highlighted
by an additional suffix character to the end of release number, so our next
release could well be 1.1a, or 1.2a et cetera.



Technical Information


ACCOMMODATA is written using Clipper v5.01 (originally from Nantucket who
were then bought by Computer Associates).  We have not used any additional
libraries to develop the system (in v1.1 at least) and all programming has
been done by Anthony Phipps.



Future development plans


We cannot go into too much detail here, but we hope to introduce the
following features in future releases;


1.	A "BOOKINGS TRACKER", to allow the user to log who stays where, when,
	and how much their bill came to (could be used both for business and as
	a personal record).  The tracker will also allow the user to print a
	full report of their hotel costs at the end of the year, an analysis of
	"best value for money" acommodation and will allow them to produce a 
	mailing to the hotels visited to request special deals, special breaks
	and so on.

2.	A "PROFESSIONAL" version, to include a comprehensive "conference manager"
	module to assist companies in locating suitable accommodation, mailing
	the list of prospective attendees, tracking replies, issuing tickets,
	producing follow up letters etc.  Yes, we expect there to be a higher 
	price tag for this system, probably around 100 + update costs.

3.	On-screen photographs of the hotel
	(This is a tricky one because, if we are to avoid cutting out a large
	number of our existing users we must to produce a non CD-ROM based
	system, but the amount of disk space required is huge i.e 2000 hotels
	each with ONE on-screen photo would require an additional 40Mb or so!

4.	A sister product aimed at providing a location service for restaurants.
	(We have already approached a number of restauarnts and they are not 
	particularly excited by the idea!).  Imagine you are entertaining 
	business associates or friends.  You want to find a restaurant in your 
	area (or worse, out of your area!) who serves INDIAN food, but also
	caters for a VEGAN diet, they must also be able to sell you a few
	bottles of LAMBRUSCO wine.....see the potential?


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