A Checklist for Proving Every Reservation Came Across After a Migration
How to compare OTA confirmation numbers against your new system one by one, and the warning signs that tell you a reservation is missing before the guest arrives at your door.
The Prime Host Partners team9 Aug 2026 · 6 min read
The worst outcome of a migration is not a wrong rate. It is a guest standing at reception with a valid confirmation for a room your calendar says is empty. That failure is entirely preventable, and preventing it takes about an hour of deliberate checking.
Why a matching total is not proof
The most common check is to compare counts: forty-two reservations in the extranet, forty-two in the new system, done. But a count only proves the totals agree, not that the same forty-two reservations are on both sides. One reservation missed and a duplicate imported produces exactly the same total.
The only check that means anything is identity-based: every confirmation number that exists on the channel side must exist on your side, and the dates must match.
The comparison, step by step
Export the reservation list from each channel's extranet for a window covering today through at least ninety days ahead
Export or list the same window from your new system, showing the channel confirmation number for each reservation
Match line by line on confirmation number, not on guest name — names get shortened, transliterated and truncated differently by each channel
For every match, check arrival and departure dates and the room type as well, not just that the reservation exists
Investigate any reservation present on one side only, in both directions — an extra one on your side matters as much as a missing one
Repeat the whole comparison once more after the final channel is cut over, because in-flight reservations land during the switch
Warning signs worth chasing
Three patterns that usually mean something is wrong
1A gap in the sequenceReservations arriving in a steady stream with a visible hole around the cutover time usually means the import window missed the tail end.
2Modifications that did not followA reservation can import successfully at its original dates while a later modification does not. Check any reservation that was changed near the migration.
3Cancellations that came backA reservation cancelled on the channel but imported as active blocks a room you could sell. These are easy to miss because nothing looks broken.
Trust that a count matched is a decision to find out later. Checking confirmation numbers is a decision to find out now, while it is still cheap.
Make it a standing check, not a one-off
Reservations can go missing long after a migration — a webhook that failed silently, a channel outage during a busy hour. The same comparison that proves your migration also works as a routine audit, which is why our system re-derives the count automatically every hour and shows the channel's own confirmation number for every reservation, so you can spot-check any of them against the extranet whenever you want.
Want to see all of this working for real?
Walk through the actual system in read-only mode. Nothing to fill in.