What is an access number?

What is an access number? I don’t understand. You call the country access number to have direct access to the country you are calling. Ok.So then which number shows up on their caller ID if you’re calling from a hotel landline?Let’s say someone calls you collect from a hotel landline overseas and it says collect call from their hotel. However the phone number that showed up is local to you, a USA number. Is the phone call coming from the hotel or is it some weird spam recording?Is that what access numbers are? You get rerouted through a local number and then they receive the call from that local number??? So why did they need to call collect?I’m so confused. via /r/technology https://ift.tt/303UmUo