A lot of Twitter messages coming up are wondering about the "Confirmation" numbers and what they mean.
We've heard people say they have numbers in the 1,000's 10,000 and then billions.
What does it all mean? Who is 1st priority? Why are there 72 billion confirmation numbers? Does the number matter at all? How are these numbers decided?
A lot of worry and time and energy goes into picking a hotel for your "top xx" list and so when the confirmation that they've received your request seems off or weird, people tend to get a little anxious. Thats understandable and completely normal. But at this point I say don't stress any of the numbers, and here is why;
First of all, let me preface this by saying, while I was the Facilities Liaison for a convention in Oregon last year, I am -in my day job- a Front Desk Agent for a local franchise of a large West Coast Hotel chain. Out of respect for my company, and my own privacy I will not name the hotel here as of yet, but I will say that I enjoy my job as it gives me a great insight into the world of hotel bookings as well as a unique perspective on how Conventions are run.
So what is a confirmation number? Well, for any normal given reservation it's the code for which we can easily look up your stay and access any change that needs be made. For group bookings it can be a signal of your group and your status in the group. And for bookings that happen directly with the hotel it can be a straight up signifier of how what number reservation you are for that hotel since it's current ownership and franchise installed the system it uses.
For example; My hotel has been owned by the same people for the past 3 years. When you call our hotel directly (aka talk to me) to make a reservation, you will get a number that is currently around 210600. This means that in the past 3 years we have had roughly 210,600 stays at our hotel (give or take the amount of cancellations).
However, the online reservation system for our website (done corporately) has numbers well into the millions for reservations. While you might be able to tell how many reservations have been booked over our entire company since it's beginning of use of its current system, things like edits, third parties and cancellations affect that number greatly. And then there are 3rd party reservations, which use more of a confirmation code, than a number. Truth be told, you get all three numbers when you book with my hotel if you book on say Priceline or another 3rd party company's website. But you will most likely only ever see the one from the travel company/agency. That number for them is not an indicator of the number of reservations made, it is more of an indicator of your place in their system at any given time. When you disappear, so does that number. It can even contain letters to signify things about your reservation. In that sense it is a computer code that signifies your reservation as a whole.
So; why the big discrepancies between numbers? Travel Planners books hundreds of rooms and room types and events all over the place. They are a large company and a great asset to Comic-Con. There ability to quickly sift through thousands of requests and ping them back as data to e-mail addresses world wide is really quite something. The numbers they use to identify us however, really mean nothing at current. A computer system may be using them to track priority on different hotel locations and orders (lets say for instance, everyone who picked the Hard Rock as their #1 choice has a confirmation of 11,000 while people who chose The Westgate have a 43,000,000,000 confirmation number) but since we have none of that data in our hands, it's pure speculation. The wide variety of numbers however, does not account for "placement" in line. Something else must be telling Travel Planners that data.
Third party companies take all the data given them and compile it into math equations. Basic algorithms are now tirelessly working through all the data entered to find the optimal entry path for each request and execute it as seamlessly as possible with each and every hotel. More than likely, when that is done we will all receive new numbers, attributing either to each hotel specifically, or to Travel Planners. However, there is no guarantee we will ever know who was "first" unless we the fans compile that list ourselves :)
