Check your requirements in the instructions.html regarding the search.
What criteria has to be used?
Your findByCriteria API method says " any field value that begins with criteria[n]", but your GUI MAY (or may not) say EXACT criteria.
Write down what you took in consideration on your choices file that has to be delivered along with the code.
If your requirements file really include the occupancy field and does not say anything about an exact match, I guess it would be up to you to take a decision and justify it. If it is there and it says exact match, just parse the String criteria to an int and compare it with ==
Regards,
Kiev