Hi Tom,
You just do some serious presumption here, that the user will need and advance search feature just because the data access layer provides this.
The D.A. layer provides this extended search feature to serve various clients (in the future), this client can be swing clients or what ever.
This feature was not required, if you care about this(and this is good)
you need to provide something like :
Your user interface should be designed with the expectation of future functionality enhancements, and it should establish a framework that will support this with minimal disruption to the users when this occurs.
With other words don't provide the feature(s), provide only a convenient way to add new feature(s).
An other point is that your advance search UI functionality is not so obvious for someone which does not knows the specification. I mean what happen if you let an empty field ? there are some mandatory fields ? etc.
And now about the layout : your design is clutter, try to balance (and order) it - with other words try to align somehow your components.
And now the search bottom panel - if you select a hotel name and a localtion name the component label disappear (the user must memorize some components and them position).
If you decide to use an search panel, you need strong argument(s) but one argument against it is that you pollute your main UI with unnecessary things, more if the search feature will be extend in the future, you'll alter with this also the main view (if the future search view will be complex - and that means big this will swallow a big part from the main UI).
And now the good parts, the window(dialog) titles are ok.
Opps so much text on such a early hour, I think is something in the
coffee.
Regards M