Remember in the HotelTechAwards when companies across 6 categories made a mad dash for the finish line and ended up creating ties? The reason for this is that like Google's algorithm, the HT Score evolves over time.  The ways it evolves over time are either (a) old variables become bad or less relevant signals of quality or (b) new more relevant variables are introduced to make the rankings better (aka. make it easier for users to find what they are looking for).

In this case, the improvement to the HT Score is coming in the form of removing an old variable that is no longer relevant and is inflating scores (equally across the board for all vendors) and making the HT Score less helpful to users.  This variable is profile completeness, and profile completeness is what caused the multi-way ties across six categories.

In the early days of Hotel Tech Report when the site served as simple directory of categories and companies one of the most important variables to help hoteliers learn about products was providing helpful content on your profile.  As such, if a vendor completed 80% or more of their profile, they received a profile completeness incentive which increased their HT Score by 10.  The problem is that now that almost all vendors have over 80% profile completion, this 10 point boost is actually making the rankings less effective.  

Let's look at an example:

Company 1:
Raw HT Score = 91 pts
Profile completeness = 80%
Actual HT score with completeness boost = 91+10= 101
....but since max HT Score is 100,their score displayed is 100

Company 2:
Raw HT Score = 99 pts
Profile completeness = 80%
Actual HT score with completeness boost = 99+10= 109
...but since max HT Score is 100,their score displayed is 100

So while company 2 technically has a higher score (99) than company 1's (91), both show as 100 after factoring in the profile completeness incentive.

FAQs

Will my company's score change as a result  of this change?

All companies will be impacted equally with the removal of the 10 point profile completeness incentive as a variable.  Only company's with a perfect 100 point HT Score will maintain this.

What can I do to improve my score?

All other variables of the HT Score remain the same.  To read more about the other variables you can do sohere.  Hotel Tech Report users are looking for vendors who have verified customer feedback so its pretty simple, the HT Score is all about customer feedback.  More and better reviews is the key to attracting more hoteliers and improving your HT Score.

Its now easier than ever for hoteliers to compare products side-by-side on Hotel Tech Report to:

• See how their existing providers stack up
• Compare multiple products in their consideration set
• Easily glance attributes across profiles without bouncing around the site

Ready to check out comparisons? Launch compare

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*IMPT*: Vendor checklist for feature comparisons

The easiest way to see what info your products are missing in comparisons is to run a comparison yourself.  That said, here is a quick checklist to make sure your products look their best:

1. Select product features: make sure you have your features checked off in your profile editor
2. Correct your customer mix: Approximate your segmentation to help your ideal buyers find you
3. List your integrations: Add and verify all of your integrations so they show up in compare
4. Get endorsements from experts: Get industry experts and partner vendors to endorse your products
5. Reviews Widget: Add the reviews widget to your website to get your transparent vendor badge
6. Add pricing: Add your pricing model to build trust with hoteliers

​Hoteliers can now search Hotel Tech Report by integrations to find new products that are compatible with their existing systems!

​Launch integrations engine​

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Integrations FAQs

• How to manage your company's integrations
• How to make the most integrated companies in Hotel Tech List
• Interested in becoming the sponsor for the integrations section of Hotel Tech Report to feature your brand across hundreds of integrations pages?

Many of you have asked about this and know its been coming but as always, we give our shout out to the drivers of change.  Thanks for the feedback Matt from CloudBeds and Macey from Intelity!

Now that we've gotten our shout outs out of the way, here's what you need to know:

BEFORE

You had a unique review URL for each of your products and if a customer used multiple products, they would have to leave multiple reviews.

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NOW

Send customers to your company's single review URL (ex.https://hoteltechreport.com/write-a-review/cloudbeds) and they can select which of your products they use and don't use.  Their review will then be syndicated across your respective product profiles.

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Ways to maximize your new company review link:

• Use your link to add an in-app message to put your review strategy in auto-pilot
• Add an email footer with a link to 'leave us a review' and add it to your team's email footers

What's new?

1. Review syndication- your customers can now leave one review for multiple products
2. Integrations search engine- prospects can now search for solutions based on integrations; make sure to list and verify yours
3. Product Comparisons -our users can now compare solutions; follow the simple steps below to make sure your products standout
4. Vendor-to-vendor endorsements: get your partners to endorse you and show that they stand by the quality of your products
5. Website widget-  paste this one line of code on your website to display a live feed of your Hotel Tech Report profile stats and demonstrate your commitment to transparency
6. Update your email- update your email and never receive an HTR to your personal email again.  Are you as excited about this one as we are?

Details on each below...
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About the new Review Syndication Feature

Now you can send your customers to your company's single review URL (ex.https://hoteltechreport.com/write-a-review/cloudbeds) and they can select which of your products they use and don't use.  Their review will then be syndicated across your respective product profiles. 

​Learn about review syndication​

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​About the new Integrations Search Engine

Hoteliers can now search Hotel Tech Report not only by products and categories, but now by integrations, too! 

• Haven't had a chance to add your integrations yet? Learn how
• Want to make the Most Integrated Companies in Hotel Tech list? Learn how
• Want to learn more, check out the feature release for more details

​Learn more​

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​Side-by-Side Product Comparisons

Its now easier than ever for hoteliers to compare products side-by-side on Hotel Tech Report.  With this feature, our community can see how their existing providers stack up, compare multiple products in their consideration set and easily glance attributes across profiles without bouncing around the site.

Sales teams can also leverage comparisons for sales enablement to build trust with prospects and show how your product is differentiated.
Here's a quick checklist to to make sure your products look their best in side-by-side comparisons

​Launch compare​

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​New Category Sponsor Benefits

Sponsorship is now open to the greater Hotel Tech Report vendor community with a new and improved look.  Vendors who have a minimum of 10 verified reviews are eligible to sponsor their category.  Only 1 sponsorship is available per category and offered on a 1st come first serve basis.

​Browse the full list of sponsorship benefits​

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Vendor-to-Vendor Endorsements

In the hotel tech industry, the experts who know the best products are often consultants and vendors themselves.  Now vendors can invite experts, consultants and partners to endorse their products with a single click.  Endorsements show industry support and are factored into product comparisons.  Show your support for your favorite companies, products and partners with 1-click endorsements.

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​Hotel Tech Report Reviews Widget and Transparent Vendor Badge

Build trust with prospects, get SEO benefits, earn the transparent vendor badge and get some super awesome javascript animations on your website.
Learn more about how-to-add the HTR reviews widget to your website

​Learn how to add the widget to your site​

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​One of the downsides to LinkedIn auth is that your LinkedIn email gets pulled in instead of your desired work email where you want to receive notifications.  While many of you have updated your notification email in the profile editor, this also created duplicate accounts in many cases meaning you continued getting emails to be both addresses--no more! At your next login, once you verify your preferred email all of your accounts will be synced and you will only receive notifications to your preferred email address. 

​See how to unify your accounts​

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• Review quantity ceiling: Limit to the impact of review quantity to level the playing field for smaller companies who have great products that hoteliers love to shine (so bigger isn't always better)
• Review quantity floor: Ensures that a company can't just get a handful of perfect scores from their friends/early clients and all of a sudden boost to the top of the rankings ahead of established and trusted products in the category with lots of customers who vouch for the product

Update August 2021: Minimum review threshold now includes a decay factor on old reviews per the HT Score Poseidon Algorithm Update (Q3 '21)

TL;DR

1. The 'Minimum Review Threshold' is just a fancy way of saying 'the average number of reviews' for products in a given category 
2. The algorithm only looks at products with enough reviews to be considered significant and trusted by buyers (30 reviews+)
3. It protects against scenarios with limited sample sizes (ex. a company who gets 1x 5-star review won't be able to outrank a company with 200 x 4.5-star reviews)
4. It creates a level playing field and protects against larger companies always being top rated (bigger isn't always better)
5. Quantity is a factor in the HotelTechScore but only to the extent that a given product needs to meet the avg. # of reviews in the respective category to be able to be compared side-by-side with other established companies

Related articles: How is the HotelTechScore calculated?

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Let's dive into the details, rationale and an example of how the Minimum Review Threshold works, shall we...

Reminder of what the minimum review threshold is in the scoring algorithm
If you recall from thearticle on how the HotelTechScore is calculatedone critical element of the score is the minimum review threshold.  The minimum review criteria is quite simply a check and balance that is meant to ensure that there is a sufficient amount of customer feedback to help inform the score.  So for example, if a product has all 5* ratings but only one customer review...they shouldn't have a high score relative to a company that has 4* and 5* ratings but 20 customer reviews.  

This is where the minimum review threshold came in.  It was a way to ensure that products without enough information/insights weren't jumping ahead of companies with lots of high quality reviews to help buyers.  The way we did that initially was to take the average number of reviews for all of the companies that had claimed profiles on Hotel Tech Report and essentially set that as the bar for how many reviews a company needed at a minimum and if a product didn't meet that minimum threshold, their score would get docked to ensure that they didn't move past companies with lots of high quality reviews (for more detail please revisit thearticle).

 - The Problem -
The problem that was brought to our attention by a few top rated HTR vendors (thanks Mackenzie and Alex!) is that in some categories this still leaves certain companies who don't have many reviews looking as good as companies with lots of reviews (and sometimes even passing them).

When we looked into these specific cases we realized that the issue lied in the fact that the minimum review threshold was being calculated site wide and that in several circumstances the problem that we were trying to fix with the minimum review threshold criteria was still happening in certain scenarios.

 - Why it was happening -
The minimum review threshold used to be site wide so in some more developed categories with companies with lots of reviews, the threshold was relatively low which meant getting a few reviews could boost your score a lot very quickly.

 - The Solution -
Change the minimum review threshold to be by category.  After the update, the part of the algorithm criteria that is the minimum review threshold will switch from all HTR profiles, to being calculated within each category.

 - How will this impact you? - 

(a) If your company has a similar amount of reviews relative to others in your category, you will likely see your score go up
(b) For companies who seem to have a high score currently but only a few reviews, your score will probably go down

 - What if I'm in the latter (aka. camp 'b')? -
If you thought you could sneak away with a high score and very few reviews...sorry to rain on your parade...but this is a good thing, we promise! Plus, if you want to prevent your score from decreasing, all you have to do is reach out to customers and get some more reviews! (note: the update goes live Friday 10/27)

Let's look at an example to see how this works...

Angela works at a hypothetical company called Guestly who makes guest happiness software (category also hypothetical...).  Now for Angela to hit the minimum review threshold, she will need to be above the average amount of reviews for profiles in her category with more than 1 review.  So here are the review counts for them:

1. Happy Guest- 27 reviews
2. GuestSatis - 13 reviews
3. Better Toguester - 3 reviews
4. Guestly - 5 reviews

To meet the criteria for the minimum review threshold we'll take the average of these review counts (27+13+3+5)/4 companies=12.

So in this case, only GuestSatis and Happy Guest meet the minimum review threshold so Guestly will need to get 7 more reviews to check this box and bump their score along this criteria (again, the minimum review threshold is one of several criteria...but it is an important one).  Remember, Hotel Tech Report doesn't rank based on who the best company is (that's a subjective measure) but ranks the companies that provide the most information and transparency and who have the most customers that love their products and services enough to share their experience with others.

Still have questions?

If you have any feedback, ideas or thoughts on how we can continue to improve the HotelTechScore ranking (or anything else!) like Mackenzie and Alex, please reach out any time via the live chat on Hotel Tech Report or by posting on our communityfeature request board.

May 2020 Update: Average for the minimum review threshold calculation now only includes companies with >30 reviews Learn more