These are two solutions I could think of that would help make things more convenient for people to book a hotel. 1. Add the numbering system for people who bought a badge to be able to reserve a hotel that fanime originally attended to implement. 2. If somebody who reserves a hotel without a badge are REQUIRED to purchase one and if they don't within a certain number of days, your reservation will be canceled and people who do have a badge can snag the room. This was something I've seen Anime Expo implemented.
And yes, I've heard the complaint's about "This is unfair! I don't have the money to purchase a badge yet!" Well I hate to sound like a jerk but TOO BAD! First of all if your either a new person or a regular fanime attendee then you should have saved up in advance for a badge. It's like this, You don't have the money to purchase a 55$ badge compared to reserving a hotel that will cost you at least close to 100$ a night? That doesn't make any sense! I was the majority that was extremely upset when fanime decided not to implement this system. It could have possibly prevented ANY crashes or overload during the website!
Though from what I hear people couldn't reserve a hotel without buying a badge.
I was all for a system requiring a badge to get a hotel room, but since it happened by accident this year there's now some evidence that it won't make getting a hotel room any easier. There might be ways to alleviate the problems like server load during hotel registration, but I don't think having to register up front is going to make any more rooms available.
Actually, it does make sense that people don't have $55 to spare at sudden notice but do have $100 a night for a room since once you book the hotel you know how much to save for. This is the first time since I started attending that it's gone up so early and some people live paycheck to paycheck with little wiggle room. I do agree that having to purchase a badge in order to book a room might lessen the stress on the servers, but I think(as I've seen other people say) Fanime is just outgrowing downtown San Jose. It gets harder to book a room every year because every year there are more people attending. I'm sure there are ways that can make it an easier process, like requiring a badge to book a room and having a limit of so many rooms per badge number, but I don't think it's completely avoidable anymore.