Methods and systems for transacting travel-related goods and services

A system for publishing content in an exchange system for viewing by customers, the system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, the memory storing instructions, the instructions executable by the processor to perform a method comprising:
• receiving content records from systems of a plurality of suppliers of services or goods and defining a category of service or good for each of the content records, at least a portion of the content records having a different category from one another;
• defining metadata associated with each of the content records;
• publishing the content records and metadata in a public domain of the exchange system, the public domain is viewable and searchable by one or more consumers;
• processing the metadata to create one or more natural language parser (NLP) components;
• receiving a text string request written in a natural language from a consumer;
• parsing the natural language request using one or more of the NLP components to:
• search the natural language request for keywords and phrases;
• determine a good or service category for each keyword or phrase, wherein searching comprises using an equivalence class of phrases to match at least a portion of the keywords and phrases to a content category when the keywords and phrases do not exactly match any category of the content records stored in the exchange system;
• and
• search the exchange system for metadata of content records that correspond to the parsed keywords and phrases, using the good or service categories determined for each of the keywords and phrases;
• constructing a search query in a format that is supported by the exchange system from the request;
• transmitting results of the search query to the consumer;
• and
• based on the results of the search query, posting a request for services or goods to the exchange system, wherein the exchange system is operable to send notifications to one or more suppliers selected from the plurality of suppliers of services or goods based on one or more categories included in the request.