OpenRoomIDAn open identifier for accommodation units

A permanent public identifier for every accommodation unit

OpenRoomID gives each room one name that never changes. Any person or system can resolve it to check that the room exists. Assignment and resolution are free.

The identifier

7QM4KX92Property codeEight characters. Names the building and never changes.1412Room designatorThe number on the door. Named or unnumbered rooms get a code instead.BUnit suffixUsually A. It changes only if the hotel later puts this door number on a different room.

The property code alone, 7QM4KX92, names the building. The URI form is rid:7QM4KX92-1412-B. The full grammar is in section 3 of the specification.

Look up an identifier

Accepts a full unit identifier, a property code, or a rid: URI.

What a lookup returns

StatusMeaning
ActiveThe unit exists and this is its current identifier.
SupersededThe unit exists under a newer identifier, which is given.
RetiredThe identifier named a real unit that no longer exists as one.
Not foundNo such identifier has been assigned.

A record also names the property and the supersession chain. It never carries rates, availability, scores, reviews, or condition. Naming a room is shared infrastructure. Describing one is a product, and the two are kept apart.

Purpose

Booking sites, software agents, and guests cannot check today that a listed room exists, or that two listings describe the same room. OpenRoomID makes one rule enforceable: a roomID may be live under one listing at a time. The paper sets out the reasoning.

Governance

The OpenRoomID Project is the registrar. It sells nothing. Its founding sponsor, Roomza, Inc., funds operation and sells room data outside the registry, which the specification forbids the registry to favor. The full registry is published under CC0, so anyone can verify it or run a second resolver. See section 7. The Project is run by volunteers, and several roles are open.

Open questions

The working group has not decided these yet. Pick the answer you would choose. Votes are not binding, and the working group reviews them before it rules. To make a longer case, open an issue on the public tracker.

May a booking platform register a property that has not claimed its identifiers?

Pre-registration would cover more rooms faster. It also risks wrong door labels that the hotel must fix later, and leaves open who controls the record until the hotel claims it. Section 4.3

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How should a suite made of two rooms behind one door be identified?

Connecting rooms and lock-off suites are booked both ways: as one space and as two. The registry needs one rule for what counts as the unit. Section 4.3

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In a hostel dormitory, what gets the identifier?

Guests book a bed, but the bed sits inside a room. Identifying beds is precise. Identifying rooms is simpler and matches the door. Section 4.2

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Should identifiers carry a check character to catch typos?

A check character catches mistakes when an identifier is read aloud or copied by hand. It also makes every identifier one character longer. Section 3

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If the OpenRoomID Project stops operating, who takes over the registry?

The public registry dump means the data survives. What is undecided is who runs the resolver and the name, and how that is fixed in advance. Section 7

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One vote per question per browser. Your browser keeps an anonymous random ID so you can change your vote. Nothing else about you is stored.

Documents