PHP - Hold Session variable from Select Option box to every page - php

Question

I seem to be having a problem and after hours of searching and messing with different ideas I can't seem to come up with this seems to be simple PHP Session problem with my Select Options menu.
All I want to do is simple have the selected Hotel Name from the dropdown hold till it is changed, and this goes for every page. So I thought, of yea lets just use Sessions. Doesn't seem to work very well as it keeps refreshing the data. Here is my code, and maybe one of you guys can come up with a solution. I would really appreciate it!
We are using a json file to populate the menu that we get by using a CURL to call the data and then decode the json.
Here is the dropdown code:
<select id="hotelSelected" name="hotelSelected">
<?php
sort($hotelName);
foreach($hotelName as $value):
echo '<option value="'.$value.'"'.ucfirst($value).'</option>';
endforeach; ?>
</select>
And then I tried to create a session by doing this:
$_SESSION['hotelName'] = $hotelName;
And now I need this session to carry on every page. And possibly echo on certain pages by possibly using this:
echo $_SESSION['hotelName'];
Any help is appreciated or redirect me to a forum that can fix my problem. Thank you guys!

Answer 1

you should use session_start(); at the top of every PHP file which uses sessions.
Also if you have a form contains SELECT tag , after submitting the form you should use $_POST['hotelSelected'] for grabbing tha value of option selected by user.
EDIT 1:
<select id="hotelSelected" name="hotelSelected">
<?php
sort($hotelName);
foreach($hotelName as $key=>$value):
echo '<option value=($_SESSION['hotelname'][$key]):"'.$_SESSION['hotelname'][$key].'"'.ucfirst($_SESSION['hotelname'][$key]).'?"'.$value.'"'.ucfirst($value).'</option>';
endforeach; ?>
</select>
<?php
$_SESSION['hotelname']=$hotelname;

Answer 2

html
<select id="hotelSelected" name="hotelSelected" onchange="run(this)">
<?php
sort($hotelName);
foreach($hotelName as $value):
echo '<option value="'.$value.'"'.ucfirst($value).'</option>';
endforeach;
?>
</select>
javascript
function run(sel) {
var i = sel.selectedIndex;
if (i != -1) {
$.post('updatesession.php', {id:i}, function(){
alert('Session Updated!');
});
}
}
updatesession.php
if(isset($_POST['id'])){
session_start();
$_SESSION['hotelName']=id;
}