Twice a year HTR assesses the categories on the site to determine if there are new categories that need to be added based on the evolving hotel tech stack as well as prune old categories that are no longer relevant or a good fit.  In our end of year analysis we determined that the IT & Building Management category on the site was confusing to users and was serving as a catch all for categories of the tech stack that really didn't belong together.  

As such, we have decided to deprecate this as a department from the site beginning early January 2024.

What will happen to the sub-categories within IT & Building Management department when the department is deprecated from the site in January?

Each sub-category was assessed individually to determine the best approach for how to handle.   Here are the final conclusions: 

1. Hotel Maintenance Software 👉 moved into Operations
2. Payment Processing Tools  👉 moved into Operations
3. Cyber Security & Fraud Prevention  👉 moved into Operations
4. Pre-Opening & Renovations Software 👉 moved into Operations
5. Energy Management Solutions  👉 moved into Operations
6. Parking Management Software  👉 moved into Operations
7. Digital Signage  👉 moved into Guest Experience
8. Hotel Wi-Fi  👉 moved into Guest Experience
9. Guest Room Management 👉 moved into Guest Experience
10. Marketplaces & Integrators  👉 deprecated from the site fully (details below)
11. Metasearch & Ad Tech 👉 Hotel Advertising Solutions

Why was the Marketplaces & Integrators category fully deprecated?

one such category which was the Marketplaces & Integrators category which had several issues that lead to its deprecation from the site beginning in 2024.  The core issues with the category were: 

1. Inaccurate listings: Of the 27 products listed in the category, only two of them were true standalone solutions that were listed correctly as such.  The 25 others did not qualify as true standalone solutions and were therefore listed inaccurately in a misleading way to users.  Instead, these solutions were add-on modules that were essentially just integrations of another product.  For example, the Apaleo App Store was one such product listed in the category.  The problem is that this a hotel cannot leverage the Apaleo App Store without using Apaleo's PMS and therefore not a true standalone integrations solution and should have been listed instead as an add-on module of the Apaleo PMS.  Additionally, if add-ons that faciliate product integrations could be listed as a standalone product then every company would technically have an integrations product which just doesn't make sense and isn't helpful to users on the site.
2. No search demand: In addition to the inaccurate listings issue mentioned above, we also analyzed search demand for this category and found that there is not sufficient demand for a standalone integrations solution to justify having a standalone category for this in the marketplace.  As such, we have decided to deprecate this category.

What if my company had a product in the category? What about our reviews?

If you are one of the 27 companies that had a product listing in the Marketplaces & Integrators category, two things happened when your profile was deprecated along with the category to preserve your content:

1. Product Migration: Your product was migrated from a standalone product in the category to instead become an add-on module of the core product that it was a part of to more accurately reflect the nature of the toolset for hoteliers browsing the site so they can learn about this as a capability of your product even though it is not a standalone solution.  For example, the Apaleo App Store standalone product profile was deprecated and an add-on module was created for the Apaleo App Store within the Apaleo PMS profile. You can update the description of this module via the profile editor of your vendor dashboard.
2. Review Migration: In order to ensure that no customer reviews were lost, HTR automatically migrated any reviews that your company had solely for that product to add them to the core product that the module has been added to.  For example, if the Apaleo App Store had 10 reviews, these reviews were migrated to the Apaleo PMS product profile since the Apaleo App Store is in reality, an add-on/module of the Apaleo PMS.