2 years ago
🪄 Update Hundreds of Old Reviews with a Single Click
Want to save a boatload of time updating old reviews to get fresh content on your profiles and boost your HT Score, rankings and visibility?
2 years ago
Introducing the Verified Case Study Builder
Verified Case Studies are a feature that enable hotel tech companies to quickly and easily build beautiful, engaging and trustworthy case studies that get promoted on Hotel Tech Report. Click here to learn more about creating verified case studies.
🎁 Members will be able to use posting credits included with your membership to create case studies and for non-members/basic members case studies will require the same amount of posting credits as a guest post but for the next two weeks so go ahead and give it a try!
2 years ago
Lead Instant Connect
Lead Instant Connect is a feature that allows you to set criteria for the types of leads that you want to target so that they'll get instantly accepted and forwarded into your CRM for immediate follow-up without delays or the need to manually check the dashboard. Click here to learn more about Instant Connect.
- For Hoteliers. Deliver a better marketplace experience by enabling vendors to be more responsive and fulfill their requests faster
- For Vendors. Reduce time-to-follow (directly correlated with success rates)
Since Instant Connect facilitates a better marketplace experience for hoteliers, ultimately the entire marketplace will shift fully to this model. That said, we're going to be rolling this out slowly to give vendors a chance to migrate over to the new system and optimize your lead targeting criteria. Additionally, vendors who accept leads via Instant Connect will receive increasing incentives over the first 6-months post-launch as a reward for delivering better, more responsive service to hoteliers placing requests through the platform. Below are the scheduled incremental increases in the discount amount for Instant Connect leads:
- September '22: 15% off Instant Connect leads
- October '22: 25% off Instant Connect leads
- November '22: 30% off Instant Connect leads
- December '22: 35% off Instant Connect leads
- January '22: 40% off Instant Connect leads
- February '23: 50% off Instant Connect leads
2 years ago
Avoid Missing Leads with 🔄 Auto-Reload
Auto-reload is a feature that automatically tops up your lead credit balance when it drops too low to make sure you don't miss leads that fit your criteria due to insufficient balance.
While auto-reload is an optional feature, if you choose not to enable it you do so knowing that it comes with the following risks:
- Extra work and monitoring: Your team will need to manually monitor your balance closely on a daily basis to make sure you have sufficient to accept incoming leads
- You may miss leads: If a lead comes in that fits your Instant Connect criteria but your account has insufficient balance, you will miss the lead even if you have Instant Connect enabled for that segment.
2 years ago
Added Perks for Vendors Who Provide Great Service to Hoteliers
Beginning September 1st, 2022 we are implementing two additional benefits for all leads accepted via Instant Connect that vendors can earn to align incentives and ensure that you are delivering responsive service to hoteliers and make sure that you're set up for success which include:
- 50% Discount...on all leads accepted via Instant Connect, meaning that you get 2x as many leads for the same price 💪
- Earned access to the money-back guarantee...companies who follow HTR's Lead Program Guidelines to ensure that all leads are followed up with in a timely fashion and by defined best practices will earn the added benefit of being eligible for the HTR Money Back Guarantee. This benefit is extremely unique and is not offered by any other marketing or lead gen platforms (ie. Linkedin, Facebook, Google, etc) and as such it is one that companies earn into by providing a great experience to hoteliers.
Why is HTR offering these added benefits for vendors who follow best practices?
Over the past several months we have received complaints from hoteliers who place info requests on Hotel Tech Report that vendors take too long to reply which is why we built the Instant Connect feature to dramatically reduce time-to-followup and improve both the user experience for hoteliers as well as the vendor experience (time-to-followup is directly correlated with lead success rated).
Instant Connect facilitates a better marketplace experience for hoteliers, ultimately the entire marketplace will shift fully to this model. That said, we're going to be rolling this out slowly to give vendors a chance to migrate over to the new system and optimize your lead targeting criteria.
How much of a discount will vendors receive for Instant Connect leads?
Vendors who accept leads via Instant Connect will receive increasing incentives over the first 6-months post-launch as a reward for delivering better, more responsive service to hoteliers placing requests through the platform. Below are the scheduled incremental increases in the discount amount for Instant Connect leads:
- September '22: 15% off Instant Connect leads
- October '22: 25% off Instant Connect leads
- November '22: 30% off Instant Connect leads
- December '22: 35% off Instant Connect leads
- January '22: 40% off Instant Connect leads
- February '23: 50% off Instant Connect leads
What are the lead program guidelines that vendors need to follow in order to be eligible for these added benefits?
You can find more info in the Lead Program Guidelines documentation and below is a quick summary overview of the criteria:
2 years ago
Verified Case Studies Variable
As with all new variables, verified case studies will start out as having a nominal impact on the HT Score in their first year at roll out and will increase in importance over time to ensure that all vendors have time to prepare for the update.
How Do Case Studies Help Buyers?
Verified case studies are incredibly important towards HTR's mission of delivering an unmatched hotel technology search and selection experience for hoteliers around the world. It's also the first step towards increasing benefits based selling throughout the site to help hoteliers visualize and imagine the possibilities of leveraging digital products by seeing real examples of their peers who are using them and the outcomes they are achieving instilling urgency, trust and FOMO to drive adoption of tech in the global hotel industry.
Can Case Studies Determine the Leader in a Category?
While case studies are a nominal part of the overall HT Score (<3%), they can be the determining factor in a close race where two companies have maxed out most other variables similar to how this can happen with Google's Search Algorithm. Here is an example of how this can happen:
Example Scenario and Analogy of Google Page Speed Algorithm Update
- Imagine that 2x websites with amazing and mostly similar domain authority each have an excellent blog post about 'gardening tulips'
- Imagine blog post A consistently ranks ahead of blog post B but has really poor page speed and user experience metrics.
- When Google rolls out the user experience update, despite ranking better across other metrics, post B could move into the lead.
If you notice your rank change in a category where you have close competitors in the rankings this can be easily resolved by just making sure that you at least have some verified case studies published for buyers.
2 years ago
🇮🇱 HTR Is Now Available in 6 New Languages!
With audience growth continuing to pick up globally HTR has recently rolled out native translated versions of the site in 6 new languages including: Arabic, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Hebrew 🙌
2 years ago
2023 Awards: What's New
While almost identical to prior years, this year's HotelTechAwards come with a few new updates to be aware of going into the competition.
- (NEW) Rules agreement. Your team should have received the rules agreement. This is a new requirement this year - all competitors must sign the document by September 23rd in order to be eligible for recognition as a winner, finalist or any other prize. Learn more
- (NEW) Leaderboard visualizations: The live leaderboard is now available from within the vendor dashboard and includes a bar chart visualization with hover tool tips that break down the HTScore and show the underlying data in realtime Learn more
- (NEW) Verified case studies. Next week HTR is rolling out our latest feature - verified case studies. We'll send a dedicated update about this feature and case studies will be a ranking factor in the HotelTechAwards this year so stay tuned. Rest assured all competitors will receive access to the feature at the exact same time to keep the competition fair as always. Learn more
- (NEW) Platform awards. This year's awards include 3x new platform awards to recognize companies that have built a suite of products that that enable hotels perform and execute essential use cases and work flows that span Ecommerce, Operations and Guest Experience Learn more
2 years ago
🌎 HITEC 2022 Global Innovation Showcase
Is your company planning to launch any new innovations around HITEC that you'd like to get featured in HTR's event recap? If so, make sure to submit your innovation to get featured in HTR's HITEC recap innovation showcase (view example).
Submit your innovation to get featured
🚨Submissions deadline is June 15, 2022
Update: Check out the 2022 HITEC Orlando Innovation Showcase & Event Recap
How it Works
- Complete the submission form by NO LATER THAN JUNE 15th
- Get featured in HTR's HITEC Orlando 2022 recap innovation showcase article
- Get the word out about your latest and greatest to the global hotel tech community
💡 Please remember to carefully read the guidelines. Our team gets hundreds of submissions and it is critical for your submission to follow these guidelines in order to get included and featured in the article
2 years ago
Introducing the App Store API
Want to add HTR product ratings to enrich the experience for your user's in your app store, integrations page or marketplace? The App Store API gives forward thinking media partners, app stores, marketplace facilitators and service providers API access to HTR's data set allowing approved partners to easily enrich their product with HTR ratings and reviews to add helpful context for users and bring your app stores to life.