TL;DR

• What is it...Once a year limited availability sponsorship opportunity for a single vendor to be the exclusive sponsor in each category of HTR's official budget season buyer's guide
• What's included...High quality turnkey co-branded content, exclusive native advertising placement in your category for a full year on Hotel Tech Report and 1-year content license to leverage the guide throughout your marketing to generate leads
• When is it available...2025 Budget Season Buyer's Guides are open for sponsors to reserve beginning April 1st for Premium Members and May 15th for basic members.
• Limited availability...Since there is only one spot per year in each category, guides are offered on a first-come-first-served basis.  
• A few reasons to become a sponsor...Buyer's guides are one of HTR's best value offerings because they not only include turnkey content production but sponsorship also includes year round exclusivity as well as targeted native advertising front and center to own your category for a full year on HTR.  

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👉 CHECK AVAILABILITY 👈

Related article: Buyer's guide sponsorship FAQs

What is a buyer's guide?

The goal of the budget season buyer's guides is to create a living document that continues to evolve year over year becoming the ultimate primer for each category.  HTR partners with one sponsor per category each year to be the exclusive sponsor of that year's budget season buyer's guide.

While the design and production of each buyers guide is handled by HTR, sponsors are featured prominently throughout the guide and on Hotel Tech Report for a full year through the following year budget season and additionally are able to contribute ideas, insights and content to infuse the guide with their unique expert perspective on the category.

Key Dates & Deadlines

*Underlined = sponsor involvement

• Jan 15 - April 1: HotelTechAward pre-sale early reservations access and waitlist open
• April 1 -May 1: Premium Member early reservation period
• May 1-June 1: Regular registration period
• June 15-July 15: HTR designs and produces buyers guides drafts
• July 29-August 15th: Sponsor feedback and content collaboration period (Round 1)
• August 8 - August 20th: HTR implements round 1 feedback
• August 8 - August 15: Sponsor review period and final revisions (Round 2)
• August 20 - August 30: HTR implements final revisions
• September 1: Guides go live as they finish production and begin being promoted on HotelTech Report and sponsors receive hard copy along with 1-year content license
• Sept 1, 2024-August 30, 2025: 1-year buyers guide placement and promotion on Hotel Tech Report through 2025 budget season

Buyers guide sponsor FAQs

1. What does it mean to be a sponsor?
2. What are the benefits?
3. What is the process once my company registers?
4. How much does it cost?
5. Is there a performance marketing model available?

Geographic bonuses in the HT Score are counted based on # of reviews a given product has with 5 or more reviews from a given country or region.  Now you can see which countries and regions you have achieved this for right from the reputation report card.

Loving partner recommendations and showing love to your top partners on HTR? Ever wish there was a way for your top partners to promote you to their customers and vice versa? Well...now you can! Introducing the all new Favorite Partners Feature.

How it Works

1. Step 1: Favorite up to 5 of your top integration partners
2. Step 2: Upload a quick pitch about why you recommend their product and specifically why its a great fit for users of your product
3. Step 3: They'll get notified when you favorite them and you'll get notified if they favorite you back
4. Step 4: 24-hours after one of the partners who have favorited you leaves a review, a notification will go out recommending you as a popular product that is recommended for their company's users

Two Important Things to Keep in Mind

• Default favorites.  Until you customize your favorites for each of your products, by default favorites will be generated based on your verified integration partners.
• Favorites by product.  Each one of your products has its own favorites so make sure to customize relevant favorites for each product
• Multi-product reviews.  If a user leaves a review about multiple of your products, the favorites email logic will select only one of those products to send the favorites email about (so the user doesn't receive multiple duplicative emails)

TL;DR

• Several pay-per-review incident reports.  We have become aware of several vendors have been offering pay-per-review without knowing that this is against HTR’s incentive guidelines
• This is against HTR’s guidelines and the rules of the awards.  While this is a level I infraction (least severe), it is still against HTR’s policies and therefore not permitted, in violation of the rules of the 2022 HotelTechAwards
• Penalties for current HotelTechAwards competition. Vendors caught in breach of this policy will have the reviews from the trailing 30-days be unpublished and will not be counted towards the HotelTechAwards competition as it is against the rules
• Several vendors have claimed not to be aware of this aspect of the incentive policy.  Several vendors have pointed out that the confusion lies in the fact that other review sites do permit this type of pay-per-review incentive
• Implications for incentives on the community.  While these reviews are against the rules of the awards competition and HTR’s incentive guidelines, HTR will amend its policy effective January 15, 2021 to permit pay-per-review with fair disclosure in accordance with FTC guidelines.  Incentivized reviews will be clearly designated in the UI and ratings will not factor into overall averages.

UPDATE (3/15/21): Please note that after surveying the community for feedback, pay-per-review will continue not to be permitted on HTR (details below)

HTR Vendor Community,

It has come to our attention that a handful of vendors were unaware of HTR’s policy not to allow direct incentive reviews on Hotel Tech Report so we wanted to reach out to all vendors and clarify HTR’s policies about incentivized reviews to make sure there is no confusion.

Overview of Current Policies & Perspectives on Incentivized Reviews

Since inception, HTR’s policies around incentivized reviews have remained the same which can be found in more detail via the help center.  In summary, HTR’s perspective and stance on incentivized reviews to date has been: 

1. Reviewing B2B software is not the same as consumer goods.  When a guest is reviewing their hotel on TripAdvisor for example there are intrinsic motivations like scrap booking to catalogue their journeys, building online clout/credibility or sharing an experience with friends.  Reviewing B2B software is quite different in nature and carries lower intrinsic motivation which is why incentives are a helpful tool to gather more feedback and foster knowledge sharing.  Incentivizing a review of B2B software is similar to paying for a survey completion - compensating for a busy individual’s professional time without biasing the content of feedback.
2. Incentives as a way to thank customers are encouraged.  Incentives are common in the B2B review space.  Companies are asking their users to take time out of a busy work day to help with their sales and marketing by advocating for their product. As such, offering an incentive is not only acceptable but we actually encourage it.  So much so that we even subsidize incentives for Premium Members and have an incentive matching program for basic members
3. Outreach may never be phrased in a way that introduces bias.  While incentives are encouraged, there are obviously guidelines to follow to ensure that the way the incentive is phrased to the user does not introduce bias into their review.  Specifically, to date HTR has outlined several permitted and not permitted scenarios which vary in level of severity and of which examples can be found below:

Vendor Infractions & Penalties for Pay-Per-Review

There have been three separate occurrences of vendors in the community being reported for pay-per-review (scenario 3) which is a level 1 infraction but none-the-less, an infraction and against the rules of the HotelTechAwards.  Since the inception of the annual HotelTechAwards four years ago, the rules have explicitly stated that direct pay-per-review is not permitted.  The reported incidents were Level I infractions (scenario 3) and were not found to introduce explicit bias.  Given that there have been several occurrences all claiming that the nuances of the permitted incentives were not clear--vendors identified will not be immediately disqualified from the competition however they will incur the following penalties:

1. Vendor will have 72-hours to respond to the violation report and show that they have corrected their outreach messaging with screenshot evidence
2. Reviews collected within 30-days of the correction will be unpublished and will not count towards the annual HotelTechAwards competition.
3. Vendors who have been reported for breaching this guideline will be marked under close watch for up to 90-days where their account will be monitored closely and reviews will appear in a separate moderation queue where moderators will keep a closer eye on activity.
4. Vendors in breach will only be permitted to collect reviews via the Review Manager in the dashboard for 45-days where HTR can more closely monitor their activity and outreach strategy
5. Vendors will receive a strike meaning that any future incidents will incur more severe immediate level II penalties without option to cure

Future Amendments to HTR’s Incentive Policies

UPDATE (3/15/22) After surveying the community (both hoteliers and vendors) we have concluded that HTR will not be changing review guidelines and will continue not to permit pay-per-review.  While this is allowed on some review websites with disclosure, ultimately as a verticalized portal for the hotel industry the rankings and ratings are more critical to maintain accuracy and more importantly elimination of bias to ensure a fair platform that upholds the highest standards of integrity.  Additionally, pay-per-review not only skews/biases consumer ratings, but it also gives larger companies with more resources an unfair advantage.  As a result of these findings and feedback from the community, pay-per-review will continue not to be permitted on HTR under any circumstances as it always has been historically.

Vendors have shared 3 main reasons for the confusion around review compensation rules on the site: (a) HTR allows indirect incentives/giveaways (b) pay-per-review is permitted by other review websites and (c) pay-per-review is common in the B2B reviews space.  

Despite these points, HTR’s current (and historical) policies don’t permit pay-per-review (only randomized giveaways).  After discussing with hoteliers and vendors, we have found the consensus belief that pay-per-review should be permitted if certain conditions are met to disclose incentives to website visitors and hotel tech buyers.

The general governing body for online reviews and issues around consumer affairs is the FTC, which states the following:

• “Knowing that reviewers got the product they reviewed for free would probably affect the weight your customers give to the reviews”
• “reviewers given free products might give the products higher ratings on a scale like the number of stars than reviewers who bought the products.”
• “If you've given these customers a reason to expect a benefit from providing their thoughts about your product, you should disclose that fact in your ads.”
• “If you’re offering them something of value in return for these reviews, tell them in advance that they should disclose what they received from you.”

In light of community feedback and FTC guidelines, HTR will amend our policies after the current year awards competition to allow for direct incentives when there is fair disclosure (effective January 15th, 2022).  Disclosures will be incorporated into the hotel tech buyer user experience on the Hotel Tech Report platform.  So how will this work?

• The write a review form will include a field for hoteliers to indicate whether direct compensation has been offered for their product feedback
• Vendors will have a toggle in their dashboard indicating when they are running a pay per review campaign (on or off platform)
• Vendors found to be running direct incentive campaigns without using the toggle will have all reviews within 6-months of the incident report immediately marked as ‘incentivized’
• Directly incentivized reviews will NOT count towards the quantitative ratings averages.  Their volumes will count towards the average review thresholds and geographic targets, however, ratings like customer support, ease of use, etc. will not be included in overall ratings in order to ensure “apples to apples” comparisons amongst all vendors for buyers without the possibility of potential bias

Conclusion

Ultimately, incentives are a positive and encouraged mechanism to thank customers for their time, effort and expertise but all endorsements must reflect the honest opinions or experiences of the endorser (Source: FTC Endorsement Guides).  

Therefore while HTR may (or may not) in the future expand its incentive guidelines to permit direct incentive reviews, these reviews would need to carry a clear designation to consumers about the nature of the incentive.  Additionally, companies who have been in breach of this rule to date will receive penalties commensurate with their breach to ensure that (a) the behavior is immediately corrected and (b) reviews collected in this manner will not be counted towards the 2022 HotelTechAwards competition.

HTR recently became aware of an edge case related to the mapping of country codes to regions that was introduced along with the deployment of the Poseidon Algorithm update that we are working on a patch for that will be deployed in the next couple of days (expected go live week of 11/22).

• Impact: Minor.  Impacted only select countries and select reviews.  Some companies may have experienced slightly deflated region and country bonuses if they had reviews from select countries that had mapping issues when the user selected their location via the Google Places API.
• Issue: Edge case identified where certain country codes were not mapped properly to their region and/or country as it pertains to the calculation in the HT Score algorithm related to global reach bonuses.

What happened?

HTR typically pulls country data from the popular Google Places API (excluding mainland China reviews); however, a select group of countries and regions were found to be “unmatched” in the lookup function causing some vendors to experience artificially deflated country counts in their HTScore indexes.

Which countries were identified to have potential mapping issues?

Below is a list of countries that had anomalous entries in the database and were updated in the lookup function.  One such example is that 517 reviews in the database were classified as originating in ‘Czechia’ while the HTScore algorithm lookup function was searching for the term “Czech Republic” as defined by the Google Places API.

Please note that only a fraction of cases were impacted by these mapping issues in these countries so just because a country is listed does not mean all reviews from that country were not mapped correctly.

List of impacted regions:

• 'Virgin Islands
•  'United States of America'
•  'United Kingdom'
•  'Turks and Caicos Islands'
•  'Tanzania'
•  'Spain'
•  'Seychelles'
•  'Saint Martin (French part)'
•  'Saint Barthélemy'
•  'Russian Federation'
•  'Poland'
•  'Norway'
•  'Netherlands'
•  'Netherlands Antilles'
•  'Myanmar'
•  'Morocco'
•  'Maldives'
•  'Macedonia'
•  'Luxembourg'
•  'Korea
•  'Italy'
•  'Ireland'
•  'Greece'
•  'Germany'
•  'Gambia'
•  'France'
•  'Finland'
•  'Czech Republic'
•  'Congo (Kinshasa)'
•  'China'
•  'Belgium'
•  'Bahamas'
•  'Australia'
•  'Austria'
•  'Switzerland'
•  'Brunei Darussalam'
•  'Hungary'
•  'United Arab Emirates'
•  'Estonia'
•  'Fiji'
•  'Indonesia'
•  'Sweden'
•  'Cyprus'

Who was impacted and what was the impact?

Most vendors will not notice any difference in their scores or the scores of other products in their categories.  That said, vendors with reviews from the following countries MAY have been impacted; however, not necessarily as these were anomalies and in many cases the review countries were properly classified.  Impacted vendors may have experienced an increase in countries and regions served which would in many cases increase HTScores from understated scores previously visible on the platform.  These changes are extremely rare and likely unnoticeable but some vendors may notice a several point increase in scores as the algorithm begins detecting their accurate country and region counts once the mapping patch goes live.

Previously the review form used to capture an overall rating and a likelihood to recommend rating.  Since both were essentially two versions of an overall user rating they were duplicative which is why likelihood to recommend was (and always has) been the 'overall rating' factored into the HT Score to avoid duplicative counting of similar ratings.

In order to simplify the review form and show the more important variable front and center, the overall rating (/5) has been deprecated fully to reduce form fields and avoid capturing ratings that didn't count towards scoring and likelihood to recommend now shows in the UI in areas where the overall rating showed previously.  Likelihood to recommend has always been the most important rating in the HT Score and therefore it is being moved front and center in the UI to better reflect its significance.

FAQS

1. Does this change impact scoring? No, this DOES NOT impact scoring in any way.  It just changes the primary variable that shows in view in notifications, the review form and review manager as the focus variable
2. Was likelihood to recommend rating captured before? Yes, this variable has always been collected and has always been the most important of the ratings.  The only change is that it used to be on page 2 of the review form, now it is the first question on the first page.

As a result, there are three areas you will see the likelihood to recommend rating surfaced as the focused variable:

1. Moved from Page 2 to Page 1 of the Review Form

2. Moved into Focus in New Review Notifications

3. Moved Into Focus in the Review Manager

Managing multiple subsidiary companies and need an easier way to switch between company dashboards? Introducing the new subsidiary dashboard switcher 🙌

If you have access to multiple companies' vendor dashboards the company switcher will appear across your dashboards so you can more easily and quickly switch between your subsidiaries' dashboards.

Related update: Discounted membership for subsidiaries Interested in discounted subsidiary membership?

After receiving several complaints from members of the community who believe that review syndication is allowing certain companies to collect reviews for lots of their products through review syndication and link pre-filling where in many cases hoteliers are selecting several products but in reality the review and content only pertain to a single product.

The Problem: The problem is that on the one hand, a hotelier who uses multiple products from a single vendor should be able to leave one review.  On the other hand, this makes reviews less relevant and in some cases where >3 products are selected the user will only write relevant content for some of the products.  

The Solution: Ultimately there are two sides to the argument and there is no right answer but rather its about balancing a seamless and easy experience for hoteliers to review products while also implementing constraints to maintain content relevancy.  Therefore we have implemented two key changes: 

• Keyword tagging: The review form now will display keyword inspiration to users based on the categories they select and prompt users to use at least one keyword per product category to guide the user to provide more relevant and helpful content.
• 3-product maximum: While hoteliers can still review multiple products, they cannot review more than 3 products to keep their review focused and ensure that they include relevant feedback and content for each of the products they choose to review.

These changes serve to make reviews more reliable, accurate, relevant and helpful for hoteliers.

The 3rd and final Phase of the Poseidon algorithm update is now live and can be seen in the Reputation Report Card.

Rollout notes: 

1. Please note that more than 90% of companies on Hotel Tech Report will not be impacted by this update.  Only companies with lots of reviews from very few hotels are likely to notice any impact.
2. Please note that while Share of Voice will now display in the Reputation Report card for companies to see their current standings, it will not impact scoring for the 2022 HotelTechAwards and its weighting will be officially rolled out into the algorithm in February 2022 after winners are announced

Update: Share of Voice Implemented

Continued from Phase II: HT Score Poseidon Update is now live

What is the Share of Voice client bias update?

We’ll use two hypothetical vendors to illustrate the importance of this algorithm patch: Vendor A and Vendor B. Vendor A has 30 reviews from 30 hotels, Vendor B has 30 reviews from 1 hotel client. 

In this example, you can see that while both vendors have the same # of reviews, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to credibility and install base since Vendor A has 30 verified hotel clients and Vendor B has only 1. 

The Share of Voice variable will help identify potential client selection bias (aka. cherry picking) that can arise if a vendor is strategically only asking for feedback from a select number of clients versus reaching out to their full install base.

Who will be impacted by the client bias update?

Most companies will not be impacted by this update.  The only companies that will be impacted will be ones who have selectively sought to only seek feedback from lots of users at a small sample of client hotels.

*Note: You can still get a handful of reviews from a single property; however, if all of your reviews are coming from a small amount of properties the algorithm will identify this as potential cherry picking/gaming and your score will be impacted as a result

What can we do to maximize our score for the client bias update?

Just make sure you are reaching out organically for feedback to your client base instead of cherry picking select clients.  Also, take note that while you may certainly collect a handful of reviews from different users at a given hotel--if your strategy has been to try to game the system and collect tons of reviews from a single hotel (or small number of hotels) this will be identified by the algorithm update and your score will be impacted.  Hopefully it goes without saying but...make sure your review collection is organic, representative and diverse and you are not trying to game the system by gathering lots of a reviews from only a few select clients.

Related updates: 

• Phase I: HTScore Poseidon Update Rollout
• Phase II: HT Score Poseidon Update is now live  Continue

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👉 Check out the Q4 Updated Media Kit