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[Tigg]

Hi,

i am one of the unlucky flooffs who didnt got a room or on the waiting list. Therefore i redid all steps of reg and hotel reservations in my mind to see if there is anything that could be improved.

Am not sure if this is the right section to suggest things, couldnt find any other fitting one.

The reg system runs wonderfull, really no way to change that
But what i think can be done in a more fair way for everyone, is getting the chance to book a hotel room at equal times.
Right now it was the case the regs got approoved one by another chronological (well, at least who confirmed the e-mail of course). In this scenario, everyone whithout these time outs or loading errors got a low reg number. Chronoligical approoving then ment: You got low reg number you are one of the first who get accepted and the chance to book a room.
Now you could say: But everyone will have to check their mail and get the info, so theres still possibilities everyone can get a room.
Well, no, not if you do it right away and sent out mails in bulk after accepting 50, send mail to those, accept next 50 and so on directly after the reg. Of course everyone sits there and waits for these mails, theres no way they wouldnt cause they want the rooms and that is all too well known.

Here comes the thought of improving.
Let everyone register.
Confirm/accept everyone and send them the payment mails, but not the personalized code for the hotel.
Only after everyone got their confirmation of registering enable the booking info link with the personalized code.
This way everyone is equal and can get the actual chance to book a room, no matter how low or high the regnumber is.
Rest lays in the hand of the estrel.

I know it sounds like a tiny change but as i know technics and systems can be different, i do not know if somthing like this is possible to do, but it would be a better way, at least i think so. Of course not everyone agrees to that, many want everything be handeled completely different, so.. its just a suggestment


And now that i am done explaining. Please to all EF staff.

Let me thank you very much for doing this, for using your precious free time, for investing your nerves, money and what not, just to make this convention possible.
It is not naturally that you all do this for us and i am sure you hear more complaints all the time than a simple "thank you".

So, thank you for doing this. Thank you for spending your time. Thank you for being there and making things possible that we all can enjoy.

Sincerely,
Tigg

[Raito Wolf]

To be honest it seems the same thing just delayed. Either you register fast on the EF website or you book faster it's a matter of who is faster. It's always first come first serve, you can't find a better criteria for this problem.

[Tigg]

If you get time outs and 404 hiccups and are bound to get a higher regnumber than others and its not your fault, then yes, it is a better option.
The suggestion unchains everyone from the regnumber.
However if the info is given another time the same can happen with time outs and errors but no one is chained to their regnumber when it comes to the ability to book a room.

There is a huge difference for everyone if you get the ability to book a room before others can OR get the chance to book at the exact same time as others.

However, it is a suggestion for the staff. If they consider it or not is their businuess eventually. And as i sed, everyone has own opinions. However, thanks for your input anyway

[LeonTheOriginal]

I also think the current system is far from ideal.
The main problem is, that if you wanted to get a room, you don't just have to register yourself fast enough, but also to wait for the registration to be manually confirmed, which takes time. If that happened at some point, you additionally had to create and send that e-mail fast enough (and maybe also hope that your e-mail provider is not one of those who need some minutes to process your mail) to get a chance, so there are multiple possible sources of errors.

It would be much better if the hotel booking either was completely independent from the registering (like one or a few days later, similar to last year, just without the technical issues) or (in my opinion better) more connected to the registering, so that the hotel requests will be processed/answered (after a deadline) in order of the registration number, so you don't have to so stare on the website or your mail inbox for about 2 hours in order not to miss the moment your registration has been accepted.

[Suicune]

This would mostly move the whole "Who is the fastest and has the best luck" from regging for a ticket to regging a hotel room, resulting in a dying page because too many people refreshing/relogining for the appearing link.
Well, the only better part would be that no one would have to wait until his reg was accepted by the staff, so maybe slightly better.
I'm ok with the current system.
(But I'm not ok with Berlin not getting their ass up to finish that frigging highway and like that keep preventing the hotel from building the Estrel tower to add another ~814 rooms.)

[VulpesRex]

...But I'm not ok with Berlin not getting their ass up to finish that frigging highway and like that keep preventing the hotel from building the Estrel tower to add another ~814 rooms...

   Oh, I'm quite satisfied that the City of Berlin has the completion of the highway project as one of their top priorities, and will attend to it immediately...

  ...right after they rebuild the new airport.

 

[Pur3Bolt]

I'm not too sure if you're familiar with last year's Ladenfurence, but people seemed to agree that it shouldn't happen again and that EF should revert back to the old system - which is what you got again this year in a more user friendly way with the webpage to generate the email for you.
The only way you can win in this war is by having fast fingers. Or wait until a few weeks before EF and hope enough people have last-minute cancellations for you to get a room 😅

[LeonTheOriginal]

I'm not too sure if you're familiar with last year's Ladenfurence, but people seemed to agree that it shouldn't happen again and that EF should revert back to the old system

You also have to differentiate between a bad concept and technical issues. I think, the booking system 2017 wasn't a bad idea, but it seemed that it was just not designed for such a high amount of requests, with the result that it was completely overloaded.

[James The Dog]

Yes, I feel last year's system would have been a lot better than this year's had it worked smoothly.

[Blue Raptor]

This would mostly move the whole "Who is the fastest and has the best luck" from regging for a ticket to regging a hotel room, resulting in a dying page because too many people refreshing/relogining for the appearing link.

Yes, exactly.
There is no easy, fair, and unstressful solution to more people wanting a room than there are rooms.

I suppose they COULD e.g. let people register and set a their top four or five room / stay time wishes,
then at a predefined deadline roll random list numbers for everyone who registered until then,
(maybe give everyone a few more days to rethink their room desires, possibly even calculating which of your wishes would be left still if everyone in front of you gets served their wishes as best as possible),
and then ask the hotel to serve the requests in order of list number.

(you could e.g. add the number in the standardized email header, then the hotel can just sort by topic at day X and process top-down if the hotel wants mail)

That would take the stress out of it, make it "fair", and give you an idea of your chances by looking at your list number, - but is far from easy, very hard to set up, everyone must fill out a long list of best, second best, third best room wishes, makes the progress take an extra week or so, probably a lot of attendees find it too annoying or get it wrong, or all of their wishes are not possible anymore when it's their time in line and obviously the hotel cannot hold the queue until they heard back from them if they'd like another option still available so they feel it was unfair that they didn't get a room but others with higher number did, and yet others might misunderstand it due to language barriers... - IF it's even possible.

There surely is no easy good way, sadly.