HTScore Valhalla Algorithm Update Q3 2026
Hotel Tech Report periodically updates the HTScore algorithm to reflect how hotel buyers actually evaluate technology today.
Hotel tech is changing faster than ever — products that led their category three years ago may have fallen behind, and yesterday's challengers may now be the best choice. Most HTScore variables already weight for recency; Valhalla, our latest update, extends that same treatment to the remaining few, so every signal in the score now favors recent, validated feedback. The result is a score buyers can trust to reflect which vendors hoteliers are actively choosing and endorsing right now — not who accumulated the longest history.
What Variables Are Impacted (and how it improves scoring)
| Change | What's Changing & Why |
| Share of voice decay | Before: Share of Voice was based on an all-time count of unique hotels that recommended a given product. After: The score will look at the most recent review from each unique hotel that has recommended the respective product and apply the same three-year decay schedule used for reviews. Context: Share of Voice exists as a proxy for install base: instead of counting reviews, it counts unique hotels and benchmarks that reach against the category — so a vendor can't inflate their presence by stacking many reviews from a handful of friendly properties. But until now it counted every hotel forever, meaning a vendor's "install base" included properties that reviewed them four years ago and may have long since churned. This update applies the same gradual 3-year decay already used in review volume to both sides of the SOV ratio, so the score now approximates active install base — rewarding vendors who keep earning breadth of fresh hotel engagement, and closing the last way to coast on (or game with) stale history. |
| Customer advocates decay | Before: Based on all-time customer feedback. After: Feedback will decay over a three-year schedule, consistent with how reviews are treated. Context: HT Score isn't a measure of popularity, but the Customer Advocates bonus is a small, deliberate exception: a modest bonus for the three products in each category with the most positive customer feedback. That feedback now decays over a three-year schedule — consistent with the rest of the score — so the bonus reflects the most active, engaged customer bases today, not archives of historical feedback. |
| Partner Ecosystem Quality | Before: All partner recommendations weighted equally After: Partner integrations will be weighted based on the reputation of the partner in the global ecosystem. Context: Partner recommendations measure ecosystem trust — which vendors other companies are willing to put their own reputation behind. This update gives more weight to recommendations from the most trusted vendors in the global hotel tech ecosystem, as judged by verified customer feedback — extending the same reputation-based weighting that already powers partner integrations, so it now covers the full gamut of partner ecosystem variables in the score. |
Who will be impacted by this update?
Vendors who will benefit: companies with recent hotel reviews, active customer advocates, and recommendations from trusted partners earned in the last few years. If your market momentum is current, your HTScore and rankings will strengthen.
Vendors who may see a decline: companies whose reviews, advocacy, and partner recommendations were mostly earned years ago. That older feedback is less relevant to today's buyers and will carry less weight under Valhalla — so scores built primarily on historical signals will come down accordingly.
What can companies do to prepare?
Nothing changes about what matters: positive customer feedback, verified market validation, and strong partner support have always driven the HTScore — Valhalla simply rewards how recent those signals are.
The best preparation is keeping your validation current. Two specific actions matter most under this update:
Refresh old reviews. Reviews lose weight as they age, but hoteliers who reviewed you years ago can update old reviews with one click — instantly restoring it to full weight. Re-engaging past reviewers is the fastest way to recover decayed score.
Refresh partner recommendations. Recommendations also decay, and ones from trusted partners now carry more weight than ever. Send 1-click requests to integration partners to renew old recommendations.
Beyond that, keep doing what has always worked: build great products, serve customers well, and collect verified feedback consistently. Valhalla is designed so the vendors doing that today are the ones buyers see first.
