Notice how Eurofurence tries hard to have nothing to do with the hotel bookings: they do not know who wants a room, they do not know who got a room or who is on the waiting list. They can only control (via the booking codes) who gets a chance to book a room (and when).
Okay, so this is exactly what would change. And it still wouldn't mean EF has to "deal" with the bookings, Estrel would still be handling that obviously. What gave anyone the impression otherwise? The difference is that EF would control who's application is sent to the Estrel, based on a lottery result. Doing this, legally, should be no different than flooding the Estrel with thousands of emails and leaving the random choice up to them (because yes, due to the fact that those emails will NOT arrive in order, its already a random choice, this has been stated by EF staff as well). I thought this would be quite clear to everyone. Instead of telling a group to charge at Estrel, you take their applications and select , randomly, the amount that matches the free spots in the Estrel, and send THAT to them (to the Estrel). If it's such a legal issue to handle (more) personal data, to autofill and autosend the emails to Estrel after the lottery, then just send the notification to the winners of the lottery and ask them to fill out an email template (the part with their personal info), as it is done now. The difference being that everyone who sends those emails, gets a room. This would be simply admitting to the already random nature of the whole process and consolidating it into a system that is a LOT less stressful to everyone. (Yes I did simplify the random selection part, since obviously it would need to take into account pairings, and room types requested, maybe even alternative choices, etc, because that's just a matter of coding the logic for it, and it's not exactly rocket science especially for experiences backend devs)
Again, I don't understand how this leads to concerns from the EF staff such as voiced by Zefiro, in this thread....
Yes, indeed, that is the biggest blocker and reason why most of your suggestions, as well as many of our own ideas so far, in the end cannot be implemented. And I can assure you that we, too, are very unhappy about this, but short of not doing a con anymore at all, we have to choose one of the feasible options, even if none of them are what I'd call perfect.
This is correct, and even for multiple reasons, including legal, data protection, financial, risk, on our side as well as what the hotel is able, willing and allowed to work with, for the same list of reasons on their side.
Sorry but I don't see where this is coming from (how these are concerns in this case). Again you'd not be handling bookings, you'd simply be pre-filtering the applications based on a lottery system, and that has nothing to do with the Estrel. The only information required from the Estrel is the actual number (and types) of free rooms to start with, and that data is already available.
Honestly I can't believe that handling personal data, to auto send the booking emails to Estrel, would translate to such a huge challenge that the only other option is to not have a con....But even so , as stated above, there is a way around even that.