Firstly, you can thank Sharon from TravelClick for this feature request... 😉

• PROBLEM: Lots of leads come in on Fridays or over the weekend but the 72-hour lead acceptance window continues counting down over the weekend which means by the time you get to the office Monday you're in a mad dash to accept your leads before they incur a late response penalty
• SOLUTION: The 72-hour response window no longer includes weekends (ie. you can relax and enjoy your weekends thanks to Sharon ⛱ 🙌)

Easily invite multiple members of your team to an internal contest using the new Internal Contest feature in the Review Manager to motivate your team and gamify review gathering to boost your rankings (team leaderboard tutorial)

Update: Check out the recap

What is it? Hotel Tech Report is doing one of its highly trafficked event coverage articles featuring the latest innovations to hit the market and be showcased at WTM London.

How can I get featured? Complete the submission no later than Friday November 1st.

How many companies will get featured? All Premium members receive guaranteed coverage and basic members will be featured based on the quality, relevance and uniqueness of their submission.

Tips to get featured:

1. Basic = Boring...Make sure your submission is unique and interesting!
2. Avoid buzz words and generic marketing jargon
3. Complete your submission before the deadline

What are some examples of past recap event articles?

• HITEC 2019 Recap: Everything You Missed in Under 5-Minutes (3000+ reads)
• The Definitive Guide to ITB Berlin 2019: 5 Key Trends That Every Hotelier Must Know (2700+ reads)

When a new lead came in your team was notified and we asked that you please respond (either accept or decline) within 24-hours to ensure a positive experience for hoteliers requesting information.

If you didn't respond after 72-hours, we assumed that you were not interested in the lead and the lead's status was marked as 'expired'. At this point we reached out to the hotelier to offer additional assistance to help them find a better fit for their properties.

What's changing?

• After 72-hours if you don't accept/decline the introduction to the hotelier lead, we still reach out to the lead to offer assistance and help them find a better fit for their properties; however, instead of being marked as 'expired' the lead will remain in your 'New'/inbox with the label 'Late response penalty'
• You will now be able to accept 'expired' leads, however (1) there will be a $15 late response penalty applied to the lead price and (2) you will be disqualified from the lead refund guarantee for this lead since we cannot guarantee that they are still interested in connecting with you

How can I avoid the late response penalty on leads?

To avoid the late response penalty, please accept or decline all leads within 72-hours to protect your reputation and ensure a positive experience for hoteliers.

URGENT: THIS IS A SUPER IMPORTANT UPDATE FOR ANY VENDORS WHO ARE PURCHASING LEADS ON HOTEL TECH REPORT

In preparation for PSD2 and SCA in the EU on September 15th, we will be rolling out a new lead credit system where instead of each lead being charged at the time of purchase, vendors will purchase lead credit that is then added to your account and can be used when accepting leads.

How it works

• Login to your account
• Go to settings-->billing
• Purchase lead credit to add balance to your account for leads

Benefits of the new lead credit system

• Save time: Minimize bank level card authentication requirements to save time and reduce hassle while meeting PSD2 and SCA requirements
• Easier Budgeting: Budget for leads and purchase upfront 
• Simplified invoicing: Say goodbye to 1 invoice per lead and say hello to consolidated invoicing for lead credits.
• Bulk Purchase Discounts: Purchase in bulk and save up to 10% on lead credit

We're constantly looking for new ways to generate deeper knowledge and insights for hoteliers to add more value and make it even easier to discover and adopt the best products to run and grow their hotel businesses.

And who knows about hotel tech products better than...vendors!

Vendors have deep knowledge of the inner workings of their partners' products and companies, but they also get first hand unbiased feedback from their own clients about their partners making their expertise, knowledge and experience invaluable.

What is it?

Vendors can now invite their partners to leave a recommendation for their product which gets added to their profile and counts towards their scoring in the 2020 HotelTechAwards.

How do I get recommendations from partners?

Its simple, just have your business development, integrations or C-suite team members send out your recommendation link to your partners and ask them to leave a recommendation (tip: leave them a recommendation first and they'll be more likely to give you one back!)

Recommendation Link: https://hoteltechreport.com/recommend (select your company in the index on the recommendation page to access your unique recommendation link)

Where will my recommendations show up on my profile?

When partner vendors leave you a recommendation, it will go through a similar verification flow to hotelier reviews. After 48-hours if the recommendation passes verification you will receive a notification email and the recommendation will appear on your profile.

Up until now, each member of your team could only run a single automated review campaign at a time because their campaign templates would be in use for the duration of the automated review campaign (2-weeks).

Now, you can as many review campaigns as you want at the same time and see which ones perform best from the new campaign history tab.

Use cases:

• Send smaller batch targeted review campaigns instead of mass outreach
• Launch simultaneous campaigns to clients in different regions in different languages
• Run multiple campaigns at once with different copy in your templates and see which performs better to improve over time

What's New:

1. Campaign Setup Wizard: Give your campaign a title, preview your templates and and target specific products to shore up your weaknesses (shout out to Richard @ Quore for the inspiration here!)
2. Simultaneous campaigns/template lock-in: Send multiple campaigns at once with ease with template lock in where the templates are set at the time you send the campaign and then you can update your templates to send a new one.  Key use cases include collaborative campaigns where multiple team members want to run simultaneous campaigns, running various campaigns to different geo segments of clients who speak different languages, etc
3. Campaign history tab: See analytics and conversion around the campaigns your team has sent to learn what works best and optimize over time.

Maintaining a safe, trustworthy and professional environment for both hoteliers and vendors in the Hotel Tech Report community is a top priority. Vendors who breach the Vendor Terms or Community Guidelines will be subject to the following penalties: 

🚨 First Infraction

Mistakes happen.  In order to give members of the community the benefit of the doubt HTR offers a one strike warning policy before penalties are incurred.  Upon first infraction HTR will send a company wide notification to the vendor in breach of the terms to ensure that all members are aware of the warning and what the infraction was to ensure it will not happen again.

🚨🚨 Second Infraction

Upon second infraction the responsible vendor will receive: 

1. Public Violation Report...outlining the details of the infraction which will will be made public to the HTR community including vendors and hoteliers
2. Violation Badges on Profiles...6-month violation badges across all product profiles and category pages on Hotel Tech Report alerting users of the infraction and enabling them to view the details of what happened via the violation report
3. HT Score Penalty (-2 pts)...HT Score penalty applied to all products reducing visibility and lead volumes throughout Hotel Tech Report for 6-months
4. Awards Disqualification...Vendor will be disqualified from participating in the annual HotelTechAwards for 1-year

🚨🚨🚨 Third Infraction

Upon third infraction violating vendor will receive: 

1. Public Violation Report...outlining the details of the infraction which will will be made public to the HTR community including vendors and hoteliers
2. Violation Badges on Profiles...12-month violation badges across all product profiles and category pages on Hotel Tech Report alerting users of the infraction and enabling them to view the details of what happened via the violation report
3. HT Score Penalty (-10 pts)...HT Score penalty applied to all products reducing visibility and lead volumes throughout Hotel Tech Report for 12-months
4. Awards Disqualification...Vendor will be disqualified from participating in the annual HotelTechAwards for 2-years
5. Review Manager Removal: 12-month loss of access to the dashboard review manager

Beginning October 1, 2019, reviews more than 18-months old will no longer be factored into average ratings in the HT Score algorithm.

How will this impact my HT Score?

If you have reviews that are more than 18-months old your score may be impacted.  If you have a few bad old reviews you may see your score increase and if your only good reviews are from a lifetime ago and the only thing keeping your HT Score up you might see the opposite happen.  Lastly, if you have no recent reviews and your only reviews are from more than 18-months ago you will likely see your HT Score drop quite a bit.

How can I prepare for the update?

For most companies there is nothing you will need to do to prepare other than continue with business as usual making sure you have a sustainable review strategy in place to make sure you have fresh review content that is representative of your current product and service offering.  If you have old reviews that you want to make sure continue to count towards your averages you can also use the Premium 1-Click Review Update feature.

_____________

Want more detail?

1. What problem will this update solve?
2. How will this impact my HT Score?
3. How can I prepare for the update?

What problem will this update solve?

Software companies and products are constantly changing with most having rapid update cycles as quickly as 2-week sprints.  Having recent content on profiles ensures that reviews, descriptions and scoring are relevant for the company's current product and service offering.  For this reason, we added the review recency variable to the HT Score.  While this helps give weight to ensure that profile content is recent and relevant, it doesn't factor in the fact that old content is less valuable and relevant.  Therefore a few bad reviews from ages ago can continue to bog down a vendor's HT Score even if their recent reviews and ratings are off the charts positive.  It is for that reason that the HT Score average ratings will no longer include aged reviews (ie. reviews more than 18-months old).  The two main scenarios this update is targeted at improving on are: 

1. Companies have positive client reviews from years ago but negative reviews ever since and yet are able to inaccurately remain in top positions above companies with outstanding raving feedback from clients for the last year plus
2. Companies with negative client reviews from a few years ago that are still being disproportionately weighed down by them even though all of their recent reviews from the past year plus are outstanding

How will this impact my HT Score?

If you have reviews that are more than 18-months old your score may be impacted.  If you have a few bad old reviews you may see your score increase and if your only good reviews are from a lifetime ago and the only thing keeping your HT Score up you might see the opposite happen.  Lastly, if you have no recent reviews and your only reviews are from more than 18-months ago you will likely see your HT Score drop quite a bit.

How can I prepare for the update?

For most companies there is nothing you will need to do to prepare other than continue with business as usual making sure you have a sustainable review strategy in place to make sure you have fresh review content that is representative of your current product and service offering.  If you have old reviews that you want to make sure continue to count towards your averages you can also use the Premium 1-Click Review Update feature.

Still have questions?

Reach out anytime via the 24/7 livechat on Hotel Tech Report, we're here to help!

All Premium Membership plans now come with...drum roll please...discounted leads!

If you are currently on a Premium Plan, the next time you login you will noticed this feature has automatically been activated in your dashboard.  

Enjoy!

UPDATE 9/1/21: Premium Members now get 50% off all leads with no increase in membership fees Learn more