Peter G Matthew

IN21 Coursework 3

A REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION
FOR A

HOTEL BOOKING SYSTEM.

1) Vision

1.1

Introduction

1.1.1 Purpose
The purpose of this document is to collect, analyse and provide a high-level
view and illustrate needs and features of a hotel booking system. It concentrates on
the requirements of the stakeholders and the target users, and why these needs exist.

1.1.2 Scope
The scope of this document is purely based round a hotel booking system. A
hotel booking system may use more than one information system, and therefore other
projects maybe associated with it. These may include the Internet, local and national
hotel databases, and any other system, which interacts with the hotel booking system.
I have chosen to study an online hotel booking system, which can be fully paid for
and arranged over the Internet.

1.1.3 Definitions and Abbreviations

ASP Active Server Pages
TCP/IP Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
GUI Graphical User Interface
SQL Structured Query Language

1.1.4 References
N/a

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1.1.5 Overview
To be exact I have chosen www.bookings.org as a hotel booking system.
Bookings UK is the company name and their aim is to help customers book a hotel
reservation that is currently filed in their database. There are thousands of hotels to
search through, in over 80 different countries worldwide. The system will include
many information systems and personnel that use the system. This report will be quite
business orientated and will include various diagrams and UML drawings, done in
Rational Rose. I will use the system to the extent of following the procedure of
booking the tickets and then finishing when credit card details are added. I have done
the booking of a hotel on the Internet before so for what happens after that I should be
able to explain in a detailed manner.

1.2

Positioning

1.2.1 Problem Statement

The problem of this system is the complexity of it and it will easier to
understand with a high-level abstraction and I will use UML modelling techniques to
help illustrate the use cases and other areas of the system that need evaluating. The
stakeholders who maybe affected by the problem are the customers of the hotel,
potential customers, employees of the hotels & online booking system and
shareholders of the companies involved. The problem has an impact on the success of
the industry and the awareness of customers of many different hotels. The website
provides a search engine for hotels and this is a very successful solution, as almost
everyone has access to the Internet. The benefits of such a system are endless. The
system enables hotels to receive bookings from anyone in the world, whereas before
such a system was in place, bookings were done through either in person, telephone or
an agent.

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1.3

IN21 Coursework 3

Stakeholder and User Descriptions

1.3.1 Stakeholder Summary

Name
Employees of Hotel

Represents
The Hotel

Role
Serves hotel and customers

Employees of Website

www.bookings.org

of hotel.
Serves Hotel and users of
the website.

1.3.2 User Summary

Name
Customer

Description
Stakeholder
Uses system to book hotel Relates to Hotel Customer
Room,

and

information.
Hotel uses

Hotel

find
website

out and

Website

Customer

stakeholders.
for Relates to employees of

updating its details, and hotel.

room

availability.

system
Website

Designers

customers
& Updates

Engineers
Hotels database

on

arrival
system

Uses
of
and Are employees of website.

maintains the site.

Interacts with the website Hotel

Owners

and

system to book rooms and employees are the active

updates vacancies.

stakeholders, because they

are

interested

in

the

performance of the hotel.

1.3.3 User Environment

The number of people to complete the booking of a hotel room is one, the
customer. This is because the system is designed to be automated and not need the
input of any more users. The system is fully automated and only once a booking has
been taken does another user have to come into play. This user will be the employee at
the hotel, who assigns a particular room. Even this could be done by an information
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IN21 Coursework 3

system, but it is more likely that a user does this, usually the hotel receptionist on
arrival of the customer. The number of people involved may change this could be
because the system has a problem, needs input from another user, needs to verified for
mistakes and any other abnormalities that may occur. The amount of time spent on
each will vary according to the number of problems that may occur. If everything
goes to plan, the actual booking of a hotel room can be done very fast; I managed to
finish the task in about 5 minutes, including entering credit card details. The overall
task will only be completed after the customer has left the hotel, and the room has
been vacated. Then the process can be re-started on that room in the same hotel. It
must be remembered that the whole process is being ran on many rooms in many
hotels at the same time.

1.3.4 Stakeholder Profiles

Employee of Hotel
Representative
Description
Type
Responsibilities
Success Criteria

Receptionist, general manager or room allocation manger

Uses system to download room reservations
Experienced system user.
Maintains and uses system, helps design user interface.
Calculation of bookings, allocates customers to a room

Involvement
Deliverables
Comments

successfully.
May help design the system, for usability reasons.
Full attention.
May be difficult to use for novice computer users.

Employee of Website
Representative
Description
Type
Responsibilities

Engineer, website designer and manager.

Updates database, and upload bookings to hotels.
Experience system user.
Keeps website in order, and maintains it to ensure full

Success Criteria

usability.
Hotel can use it, and customers can search and book

Involvement

rooms.
Designs whole system, with the requirements of the

Deliverables
Comments

customers i.e. Hotel and customers of hotel.

Database of hotels.
N/a

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IN21 Coursework 3

1.3.5 User Profiles

Hotel Customer
Representative
Description
Type
Responsibilities
Success Criteria
Involvement

John Dough (multiple customers).

User of Website & Hotel Customer.
Probably Intermediate Computer User to Advanced User.
Simply uses system and has no control of anything else.
Completed Objectives intended i.e. Booked Room?
Provides the system with information about themselves,
and the system is designed for the customer as well as the

Deliverables
Comments

employees of both the hotel and the website.

Credit card details, personal information.
May be difficult to use for novice computer users.

Hotel Users
Representative
Description
Type
Responsibilities
Success Criteria

Hotel Employees
Receptionist, Managers, Any other hotel employees.
Experience hotel Employees.
Book room for customer, not to double book etc.
Reserved room for customer, least amount of complaints

Involvement
Deliverables
Comments

as possible.
Helps design system.
Input for reservations
N/a

Engineer & Website Designer

Representative
Description
Type
Responsibilities
Success Criteria
Involvement
Deliverables

Technical Employees
Maintain and Designs System
Advanced User & Technical Expert.
Maintains and keeps system running, designs system
Produces a successful service and usability is good.
Relates with the system analysts and provides own views.
Knowledge of systems and opinions on how system should

Comments

look and work.

Essentially the top technical people who will design the
system and help maintain it for future updates.

The database is not a user, rather another system that will interact with the
online hotel booking website system.

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IN21 Coursework 3

1.3.6 Alternatives and Competition

There many other websites that search for hotels and provide the same sort of
service as Bookings UK and such include www.hotel-reservations-world.com and
www.plantinn.com. These sites provide very similar search criterias and generally I
cannot find a better competitor than Bookings UK.

1.4

Product Overview

1.4.1 Product Perspective

This product is a sub-system of another system, because it relates and interacts
with many different information systems. For example the Website Booking System
will relate to the Hotels Booking System. When a website booking is made, it may
automatically update the hotels system. To do this the system will have to be
compatible with existing system of which some maybe legacy systems.
Website
Booking
Information
System

Hotel
Booking
Information
System

Communication

* This is not UML.

The users will be at both ends of the communication link and each system will
have multiple users. The existing systems will have to taken into consideration when
designing the whole communication link, because each system for each hotel may use
a different technology.

1.4.2 Summary of Capabilities

Online Hotel Booking System
Customer Benefit
Supporting Features
Ability to book hotel rooms fast and also Up to date computer technology and ASP
is reliable.

pages,

which

return

search

criteria

matches.
Can do the bookings in comfort of own Means that endless walking around hotels
home.

or travel agents is eliminated.

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IN21 Coursework 3

Customers can find out availability of all Customers know when a hotel is fully
hotels instantly.

booked.

1.4.3 Assumptions and Dependencies

The databases are not in fact part of the same system. So Bookings UK has not
got a database with bookings for every hotel on and that there is not a limited amount
of reservations for the website. If this were so then the instantaneous communication
between the two systems would not exist.

2) Business Modelling
The business context with the online booking system can be quite complex. I will be
showing an overall high-level use case diagram then I will choose a certain use case
that is important to focus on. The system operates within the scope of the website
booking system and the local system of a particular hotel. There are many users in this
use case and many are technical use cases, but there are several business use cases
that need to be explained.
This use case diagram shows the basic use cases of the business processes. (Below)

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IN21 Coursework 3

Check In/Out Customer

Process Booking

Advertising
Website
Manager
Buy Service (Book Hotel Room)
Receptionist

Manage Vacancies

Customer

Make Reservation

Confirm Booking

Cancellation Requested by Customer

Run Management Reports

Hotel Manager

A Business object model defines the business use cases from the internal business
workers. The object model below shows a high-level view of the business processes
that a hotel may do, when booking a hotel room for customer.
The object model shows simple relationships between business entities and business
workers. (Below)

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IN21 Coursework 3

Hotel Manager

Website Bookings

Hotel

Customer

Reservation

Address

Receptionist

Room Booked

Room Type

Payment

Bill

A business activity diagram that I have chosen to do is the process of a simple

booking, with various options or scenarios that may occur. (Below)

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IN21 Coursework 3

enquiry
Check
Availability
Suitable
Room ?

No

Yes
Make
Res ervation

Confirm
Res ervation

Wait for Date of

Booking

amend
reques t
Cancel
Reques t
Amend
Res ervation
Cus tom er
Arrives

Cancel
Reservation

Take
Res ervation

Calculate
Billing Sys tem

The business use case descriptions that are relevant to this interaction diagram below
are, hotel system (related to the confirmation of order) and customer who enters all
details about the criteria searched for.

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IN21 Coursework 3

Receptionist Use Case Description

Check In/Out Custom er

Hotel Receptionist
Confirms Booking

Receptionist checks customer

details and takes Passport on
arrival. The receptionist is the
last person the customer will
see and is not really part of the
electronic booking system just
the confirmation of online
bookings.
Same as customer use case.
One actor cannot accept the
confirmation if one of the others
doesn't. So customer must
accept to enable receptionist to
confirm. The use case is
dependant on both actors
agreeing.

Make Reservation

The receptionist is the only person who can confirm

and finalise the reservation on the computer system.
The system will probably do this provisionally and
then on an update process, the receptionist will
confirm. E-Mail will be then sent to customer

Customer Use Case Description

Enters Personal Details

The customer enters all their

personal details after a
reservation has been made, these
include address, name,credit card
detailsand some security checks.
Passport numbers are required
for foreign hotels.

included in Buy Service (Book

Room) us e case

New Customer

Enters Search Criteria

Advertising

The customer maybe

subjected to viewing
certain advertisments,
this cannot be helped
as it is part of the
website.

Confirms Booking

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The customer enters the

specific hotel room criteria
that they are looking for
including the area the hotel
is in, star rating, type of room
within the hotel, and services
and extras.

The customer simply confirms

booking and accepts terms
and conditions and the
amount is billed to their credit
card. The hotel then
acknowledge the booking
with a confirmation e-mail.

Peter G Matthew

IN21 Coursework 3

Interaction Sequence Diagram shown below shows the interaction between the
customers interface and the hotel booking system and the websites booking system.

User Interface

Website Booking
System

make reservation

Hotel Booking
System
Reservation and Confirmation
Objects are created due to
statement 'Is a room?'

is a room
avaliable

Reservation

is a room

confirmation passed to customer

This diagram shows the user interface that the new customer is using.

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Confirmation

Peter G Matthew

IN21 Coursework 3

3) System Scope

The interfaces that are used are, the website that the customer uses, the website
interaction with the hotel booking system. The customer will most probably use a
windows application level operating system and running an internet browser to view
the website. The website will be ran on a server and will communicate with the
browser using TCP/IP. The intermediate interface between the customer and the hotel
website is the online hotel searcher. The hotel system is the main system of interest
and their booking system is integrated with the website that introduced the two
together. The scope of the system is shown on the use case diagram near the start of

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IN21 Coursework 3

the report, using the same notation as above. The red circle indicates the area of
relevance to the hotel.

4) Requirements
The Functional Requirements of the system are quite straightforward:
1) Provide a usable system for online users
2) Enable potential customers to surf the hotels home-page
3) Enable customers to book tickets provisionally online
4) Allow a hotel receptionist or room allocator to view the provisional bookings
and confirm bookings, and reply to customer with e-mail
5) Access a secure server for credit card payments
6) Ability to update the website with latest information about a particular hotel
7) Allow managers to access database for reports and figures
8) Allow amendments to bookings
9) Allow cancellations of bookings
10) Allow customers to choice certain criteria for their stay.
Non-Functional Requirements:
1) Nice, clear user interface for receptionist
2) Hotels own website, with promotional material
3) Easy to use website (down to www.bookings.org)
4) Compatibility with all internet browsers
5) Process no show customers (could just ignore them manually)
6) Advertising of hotels and other sponsors
7) Easily updated system
Simple use case diagram of the hotel system, not including the website online booking
system. (Below)

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IN21 Coursework 3

cancel a reservation

Receptionist

Customer

make a reservation

update a reservation

take up a reservation
Billing System
process no shows

Manager
add,amend, remove hotel, room,
customer, etc

Business Rules:
1) Manager is the only employee who can add, amend, remove hotel, room, and
customer from database
2) Only one customer can book the same room, but one customer can book more
than one room
3) Only credit card payments can be received online, but any method of payment
can be used when booking in person at hotel
4) Passports must be provided if foreign travel is planned
Here are three UCD Forms of the following use cases:
a) Take up reservation
b) Make reservation

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IN21 Coursework 3

c) Update reservation
Interaction diagrams follow.

Interaction diagram for take-up reservation

Webs ite
www.bookings .org

Hotel Booking
Sys tem

Cus tom er

brows es website

prom pts us er to
s earch criteria
s earches
databas e

us er enter fields
returns hotels in
lis t
us er enquires
about vacancy

webs ite s earches

hotel Booking
databas e

res ults returned to

webs ite

res ults returned to

us er

cus tomer/Us er books hotel room

Interaction diagram for make reservation

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IN21 Coursework 3

Hotel Database

Receptionist

search for
availiabiltiy

returns availiable
rooms
database
updated

books room if
satisfactory

Interaction Diagram for update reservation

Receptionist

Manager

Custom er

reques ts amendment

asks for am endment

details

amendm ent criteria

s tated

checks
current
details

asks manager for

perm ission to access
amendm ent s ection
on GUI

manager grants
perm is sion
receptionists informs
customer of decision
and new details

5) Design
The design of my system is based around the customer, the website booking system
and the hotel booking system.
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IN21 Coursework 3

System interfaces act as facades, they are the point of contact for the GUI and other
external systems. They are supported by components in the system services layer.
The language that the database should be built in is SQL. This would enable it to be
implemented in Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The users of the system will be all the
actors stated in the use case diagrams above. There will be many users within the
company of each hotel, but worldwide there will be infinite users, anyone who wants
to book a hotel over the Internet. The developers should design the system with future
in mind. The system will have to be updated regularly because of the constant updates
that hotels have i.e. extensions and new hotels being built. Users will have to have
some computer training to be able to use the system. The systems are connected via
the Internet using TCP/IP. Operating systems should be windows machines as the
majority of users around the world use these. Databases can be implemented in such
programs like MS SQL Server or Oracle. All communications are done by using
TCP/IP, the universal transfer protocol.

Customers PC

Hardware
Deployment
diagram

<<TCP/IP>>
Telephone Network
(INTERNET)

Hotel database
Servers
<<TCP/IP>>

<<TCP/IP>>
<<TCP/IP>>
Website Servers

Billing System

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IN21 Coursework 3

Software
component
diagram

Hotel Booking
Server Database

www.bookings.org
website

Billing
Database

Online website
Server

Internet
Browser

Concept Level Class Diagram:

concept level
class diagram
Hotel Chain
1

contacted hotel

Hotel

1..*
*

1..*

Hotel
Receptionist

Hotel Customer *
1
1

*
Reservation
contact address

0..1
Address

1..*
allocation

0..1

Room
*

0..1
Bill
Payment
0..1

1
1
1
Room Type

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IN21 Coursework 3

State Diagram:

enquire about hotels

Hotels on
Database

Search for
Criteria Match

Match
Found

Yes

Satisfactory
Hotel

No

No

Redefine
Search

Yes
Request
Booking

request another
booking

Yes
Booking
Confirmed

No

New Date or
different Criteria

Yes
Credit card Details
Supplied

Final
confirmation

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