To conclude, how serious are these directories ? Well, directories - they most probably all redirect to the same folder (no differences whatsoever). Is badge display inside the hotel taken from these directories ? Yes, as researched by Magnea. Also, some more notes:

• People have been finding badges before they were meant to be known, because naming conventions are clear and don’t change; names are uppercase, 3 characters long and usually meaningful. Easy to change the latter, but apparently not so easy to change the rest. That is assuming Sulake doesn’t like stuff to be known before release. We’ve seen news about new badges being removed because Habbo staff didn't want it to be known, so we’re assuming they’re limited by own conventions/inner workings of the hotels;
• These images do not get used for display on homepage. Whenever they need an image of a badge, they upload it with a different name to another folder. There’s also a special directory (album1548) for badge display on Habbo homes;
• Starting v26 Sulake dropped the 3-character convention, partly, for the Achievement badges, which makes them harder to find, were it not they also started to add descriptions inside the so-called ‘externals’, which opens up another way to track them down;
• Build in internally, it seems, there’s priviledges attached to handing out some of the badges. Former X badges, the VIP and PRE badge allowed entering full rooms. ADM and other ranking badges probably have that. It caused quite a stir when handing out the KH2 badge delivered 25% of Canadian hotel population mod rights…