Today we rolled out a full redesign of the UI and functionality of the software recommendations quiz giving it not only an entirely new look and feel but it now fully integrates AI to help hoteliers save time and make better decisions.

✨ New AI Features

• AI Powered Fit Score: The quiz is now powered by the same AI Fit score algorithm as the Tech Stack Audit tool analyzing millions of data points in seconds to determine each product's fit for a specific hotel.
• AI Content Summarization: AI scans, analyzes and summarizes thousands of reviews, expert recommendations and content to serve up summaries for hoteliers with snippets, citations and sentiment analysis serving as the ultimate tech tools research assistant. 
• AI Topic & Sentiment Analysis: Drill deeper into each recommendation with topic and sentiment analysis to find out what real users from the leading hotel companies mention most about each recommendation while also being able to make more accurate comparisons between products along key buying criteria including: functionality, integrations, support, value/ROI and ease of use.

Since we rolled out AI Enhanced Company Descriptions a few months back we've had several vendors reach out asking how this is generated, what info it pulls from and how it works--which is why we added the new sources and citations element to help both vendors (and hoteliers) understand how this AI generated product description is being generated.

In order to make it easier and more secure for users to access their HTR accounts, as of today we have fully removed passwords from the HTR application and have replaced them with social login and magic link.

By default, if you use a social account that has your current HTR email associated with it you will automatically be linked to that account and logged in right away.  If you try to login using a social account that has a different email address associated than your current HTR account has, it will create a new account since the emails won't match but you can reach out to our team if you need assistance merging these.  Alternatively, you can also use the magic link option to login using your HTR account email.

Today we rolled out a native app in the Zapier App Store to make it easier and more reliable to sync data from leads you generate and accept via the HTR Lead Inbox directly into your own tools.

Check out the tutorial

How it Works

1. In your dashboard go to Leads > CRM Forwarding
2. Click the activate button on the Zapier tile
3. Accept invitation to the private Zapier app 

That's it! You can now integrate any of your tools with one click!

Popular Automation Use Cases

Once you activate the Zapier integration, you can setup any automations you want. Some popular ones include:

• 💌 CRM. Add leads as contacts and create an opportunity

• 🎯 Lead Nurturing. Add leads to an MQL nurture sequence

• 📈 Reporting. Add lead details to a Google Sheet

• 🔔 Notifications. Send a Slack message to your team for new leads

Easily uncover the different ways that you can generate more visibility and leads via Hotel Tech Report.

Please note that as of February 1, 2025 HTR will be migrating its email campaigns including eblasts and newsletters from Mailjet to Beehiiv.  

Why are we making this change?

As of recent we have noticed inconsistencies in Mailjet's CTR reporting.  After several weeks of trying to get a clear answer and resolution from their support team with no luck, we decided that it was time to migrate to a different service that can better support our needs as HTR's newsletter now reaches more than 100k+ subscribers.

How does this impact you?

The main difference that some clients running eblast campaigns may notice is a difference in reporting specifically around click rate.  Each email service provider has their own reporting measurements for analytics as well as bot prevention which means that comparing analytics from a campaign from Mailjet to the same campaign in Beehiiv won't be an apples to apples comparison.  As always, we strongly recommend that clients running email campaigns with HTR provide us with a dedicated UTM tracking link for your campaign so that you also have the ability to track analytics and campaign performance in your own marketing analytics tools.  Having said that, Beehiiv is one of the market leaders when it comes to email which is why we have selected them as our new provider and believe 

Additionally: 

• Emails Sent from @Beehiiv.com domain: Prior to allowing companies to integrate and send from their own domain, Beehiiv has a warm up period on new accounts for several weeks.  We don't have an exact timeline for when we will be able to switch back over to @hoteltechreport.com domain for sending; however, we have run tests and have found that the @beehiiv.com deliverability and open rates align with our own domain sending so this shouldn't impact campaign performance for advertisers

Check it out and subscribe

Sponsor the newsletter

Today we rolled out a full redesign of Hotel Tech Report's main blog.  The new design transforms the blog into a newsfeed style format that enhances the user experience making it easier to access and discover relevant content for users.

Check it out

Today we rolled out a redesigned home screen to enable you to get a more holistic view of the opportunities to drive more visibility and leads on your account.

What's New?

1. Membership Status: See your current membership status and what tiers are available to upgrade your presence
   
2. Account Health Meter: Keep a pulse on your overall account health and drill down into detail to see a prioritized list of the most important things you can do to drive more visibility, leads and ROI
3. PPC Tracker: Monitor your PPC campaign performance with day-by-day click volume metrics and a trailing 30d click counter
4. Campaign Launcher: Get an overview of the campaign formats that are available to launch to HTR's audience and drill down into sample campaigns and live availability

To kickoff 2025 we're launching a new AI assistant, Bell.ai.  Instead of hoteliers having to spend hours reading through reviews trying to synthesize information about each product, the AI assistant does this for them.

So what questions can Bell.ai help answer for hoteliers?

1. Summarize review and partner recommendations content 👉 What do customers and partners say about the product?
2. Run topical sentiment analysis 👉 What do customers think about key buyer consideration topics like pricing and usability?
3. Frequent mention analysis 👉 What do customers and partners most frequently mention across reviews?
4. Install base customer segmentation analysis 👉 What types of hotels typically use this product?
5. Review search 👉 What do users say about [x]?

1. Summarize review and partner recommendations content

2. Run topical sentiment analysis

The AI assistant automatically analyzes all review content for key topics including: user interface, product functionality, value, automation, customer support and integrations to output sentiment analysis along with summarization and citations by topic.

3. Frequent mention analysis

The AI assistant automatically analyzes hotelier reviews and partner recommendations to identify the most frequently mentioned topics by hoteliers and partners and outputs citations and summaries for each along with sentiment analysis.

4. Install base customer segmentation analysis

The AI assistant analyzes install base by property size, region, country, property type and product capabilities to help users understand what types of hotels typically use a given solution to help them determine fit for their own property. 

5. Review search

From within the AI assistant component on profiles, if hoteliers are looking for something specific they can search review content.