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Comment by dannysu | Hacker News Reader

A bot for reserving hotel rooms.

I wrote a bot to reserve hotel rooms a year in advance for a national park in the US.

It was so difficult to book. After couple days of failed attempts to reserve my desired dates, and after staying up late into the night one day, I went ahead and wrote a bot to automate the task of checking for availability and then completing the checkout process once available.

And... it worked.

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How does the bot reserve hotel rooms? Through an API or does your bot interact with a website. How do you validate that your code is still able to reserve an hotel room lets say 3 years after writing it; I can imagine that changing systems will break you code.

Not trying to be a smart ass, just interested :)

Nice! I've never been able to get a date I want for a national park. So much easier when single and or in college. I see other days, or a room here and there...but not enough for my family and for the dates to coincide with everyone's schedule.

I also don't have the foresight to book that advance. I've settled with staying offsite and just driving. Not the same experience but good enough compromise I guess.

Any chance you'd be willing to share it with us?

What language did you write it in? Curious. . .

Yosemite?

A month before July 4th, i tried booking a camp site in Yosemite and got none. I should have known the camp sites gets completely booked 6-8 months ahead. When i called one of the camp sites, the automated machine replied -

press 1 to book for this year

press 2 to book for next year.

>A month before July 4th

Ha. For a top-ten most visited park in the world? Walk-up permits are your friend. No experience at Yosemite but I got some backcountry permits at Grand Canyon, it helps if it's not peak season, I think people line up at 4am for those. Worst case you are posting up in a random field or Walmart parking lot for the night.

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