And why we send it to our travel-agency partners.
The Hotel Confirmation Number — HCN for short — is the confirmation number generated inside the hotel's own system as soon as the hotel assigns a specific room to the booking. Not by us, not by an intermediary — directly by the hotel.
We decided years ago to actively request this number and pass it on to our travel-agency partners. That is not standard on most booking platforms, and it is a deliberate part of how we work.
As long as no HCN exists, the reservation is administratively present at the hotel but not yet assigned to a physical room. Once the HCN is issued, the hotel has internally blocked a specific room. This practically eliminates the most common cause of overbooking situations.
When your customer presents the HCN at reception, the hotel sees its own reference immediately — not ours, not the intermediary's. That saves questions, mix-ups and waiting time at the front desk.
Once we receive the HCN from the hotel, we send you a short notification. To include it in the travel voucher, one click is enough:
Done. If you already sent the voucher to the customer, simply forward the new version.
Entirely your call. There is no obligation to pass the number on — the customer has their room either way. You can ignore the notification, delete the number, or simply use the old voucher. We provide the HCN; what you do with it is up to you.
Some OTAs use HCNs internally but do not pass them on — the number stays inside the provider's system. We decided early on that this information belongs to the travel agency that sold the trip. Because when something goes wrong at the hotel, it is the travel agency the customer calls — not the bedbank.
This is not a marketing feature. It is simply how we see the relationship between provider, travel agency and guest.