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

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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. 

HotelTechReport's membership pricing will be increasing on January 1, 2025 with the rollout of new membership plans.  Please read the below notice for more info about the price increase.

This is the first membership price increase in more than four and a half years since HTR rolled out the current Premium 3.0 Membership plans back in April 2020 which are still available today.

Since rolling out Premium 3.0 in 2020, HTR's Membership pricing has remained flat despite making substantial investments to grow the value of membership by: (1) growing traffic from 39k monthly users to 200k+ (2) redesigning the entire platform from the ground up and (3) adding tons of new features for members (more detail below) all without a single price increase.  During these same four and a half years without a price increase, costs of doing business also increased dramatically (22.34% inflation since March 2020).

To account for increased cost of doing business and substantial ongoing investments made into the platform, HTR will be rolling out its first price increase.

1️⃣ Will existing members be impacted?

Existing members on annual membership plans will be grandfathered into current pricing for up to 2-years.

2️⃣ How can I get grandfathered into current pricing?

Legacy pricing plans will be available via the membership portal in the vendor dashboard through December 31, 2024.  All companies who upgrade prior to December 31, 2024 on an annual plan will be grandfathered into legacy pricing plans for up to 2-years.

3️⃣ What benefits do Premium Members get?

• Overview of Silver Membership Benefits
• Compare Plan Benefits, Details and Pricing via the Membership Portal
  
• Premium Member References & Testimonials

4️⃣ What new benefits have been added for members since the current Premium Membership 3.0 plans launched in April 2020?

In addition to growing traffic by more than 5x (39k monthly users > 200k+ monthly users) since rolling out Premium v3 back in April 2020, HTR has also rolled out tons of new features and benefits for members (without a single price increase).  Some of these include: 

1. Visibility and Leads 👉 Premium Members now generate more than 3x more profile views and leads

• Redesigned Lead Inbox with Lead Targeting and native CRM integrations to bolster lead engagement
• Lead booster to drive more visibility throughout thousands of pages and UI elements site-wide 
• New ways to generate visibility and leads via: redesigned department hubs, redesigned sub-category pages, PMS App Finders, Partner Integration Pages and the AI Tech Stack Advisor

2. Cost Savings 👉 Premium Members on average save more than $4,300/year on leads and ad campaigns

• Premium Members now get 50% off leads to save thousands of dollars every year (for most members this new benefit alone covers the entire cost of membership)
• Premium Members now save thousands of dollars on HTR Agency ad campaigns with members only discounted pricing

3. Branding 👉 Premium Members benefit from enhanced branding and AI powered features

• Enhanced branding and customization through Redesigned Premium Profiles with new functionality including: Product Level Branding, Feature Groups, Review Search, Native translations into 10 languages and more
• AI powered buyer analysis tools including: AI Enhanced Company Descriptions and AI Review and Expert Recommendation Summaries
• New ways to syndicate content to generate visibility including: Case Study Builder, Redesigned Report Pages and newsletter content syndication to 60k+ monthly hoteliers

4. Reputation and Rankings  👉 Premium Members have dozens of new features to save time by automating time consuming processes

• Features to automate time consuming review collection processes including: Review Campaign Automations, Bulk Review Updating
• Features to boost conversion on review campaigns to optimize reputation including: Gmail and Outlook Integrations, Team and Language Specific Templates and Branded Footer
• Features to more effectively monitor and optimize rankings including: Redesigned Reputation Report Card and Partner recommendations inbox
• Features to showcase reviews and boost conversion including: Native Review Social Sharing and Customizable website widgets library

5. Misc 👉 

• Enhanced dashboard experience via: Dashboard Redesign, Ledger system to track transactions and Membership Portal
• More ways to get promoted via newsletter, Outbound Campaigns and HotelTechInsider podcast promotion
• Premium Member Support Bot & Coaching Checklists to maximize membership ROI
• App Store API to infuse HTR's data into your own product

One of the most common requests that we've received from clients since launching the live PPC Auction is the ability to get a forecast of potential clicks and coaching tips to maximize click volumes so we've been hard at working building just that and are excited to roll out the new missed clicks forecast.  Click here to learn how to use the missed clicks forecast to optimize your ppc campaigns