I think it's a reference to New Zealand's Managed Isolation and Quarantine system during the pandemic. Demand was far higher than availability (and quarantine was mandatory to return home from overseas), so at some point someone wrote a script to book rather than just hitting refresh. Soon, everyone was using it and they were forced to move to a lottery system instead.

A colleague of mine built almost the exact same hack to reserve a hotel in nz mid last year, I was wondering if you were him