Today we rolled out a full redesign of the UI and functionality of the software recommendations quiz giving it not only an entirely new look and feel but it now fully integrates AI to help hoteliers save time and make better decisions.

✨ New AI Features

• AI Powered Fit Score: The quiz is now powered by the same AI Fit score algorithm as the Tech Stack Audit tool analyzing millions of data points in seconds to determine each product's fit for a specific hotel.
• AI Content Summarization: AI scans, analyzes and summarizes thousands of reviews, expert recommendations and content to serve up summaries for hoteliers with snippets, citations and sentiment analysis serving as the ultimate tech tools research assistant. 
• AI Topic & Sentiment Analysis: Drill deeper into each recommendation with topic and sentiment analysis to find out what real users from the leading hotel companies mention most about each recommendation while also being able to make more accurate comparisons between products along key buying criteria including: functionality, integrations, support, value/ROI and ease of use.

Several companies have requested an easier way to view, manage and update partner recommendations via the vendor dashboard which is why HTR just rolled out a new dedicated tab within the vendor dashboard where you can: 

• View which partners have left you a recommendation
• View recommendation details
• Recommend your partner back
• Filter by product to see product-specific recommendations
• Update partner recommendations with 1-click to get them to count as fresh (similar to review updating)

Today we rolled out a redesign of the pricing tab within the profile editor based on feedback from both sides of the community (hoteliers and vendors).  Complete the pricing section for each of your products to help pique buyer interest to convert into a price quote and for a quick boost to your HT Score.

TL;DR

• For Hoteliers.  One of the most commonly requested pieces of information that hoteliers ask for most is pricing.  Hoteliers constantly reach out asking if we can obtain relative pricing benchmarks to help them better understand which products fit their budget and how they benchmark relative to each other
• For Vendors.  On the other hand, the feedback that we've gotten from most vendors is that they want pricing discretion and don't necessarily want their pricing publicly available (as evidenced by most vendors not having pricing on their websites...).  This pricing UI update allows vendors to report an estimated price range (without any add-on modules or integration fees) for benchmarking purposes while also maintaining pricing discretion (by not having to publicly state a specific price or number)
• Our Solution.  We created a way for vendors to share a rough pricing estimate for their base product for a single 100-room hotel (with no add-ons or integration fees) and then we benchmark this relative to other vendors in the category without disclosing pricing publicly
• Impact on Rankings.  Pricing information continues to be part of the profile completeness HT Score variable and does impact rankings the same as it always has so it's important to make sure to fill in this section of the profile editor to make sure you don't lose points or have any negative impact to your rankings

Today HTR rolled out a full redesign of the Reputation Report Card aimed at making it simpler to identify how each of your products scores along each of the four facets of the ranking algorithm (eg. customer ratings, partner ecosystem, customer centricity and staying power).

• Drill into each section of the HT Score in more detail
• Understand each of the drivers of the HT Score ranking algorithm
• Highlight opportunities for improvement in real time to optimize your rankings and visibility

Back in 2021 HTR implemented an update to decay the category review threshold over time (view update) to make this variable more dynamic and gradual (vs binary) in order to weight reviews left more recently as more relevant.  

Over the past several years HTR rolled out new variables including Partner Recommendations, Case Studies, Profile Completeness and the Trending Score which have to date been static (aka. cumulative over time) meaning that for example a partner recommendation or case study created today was viewed no differently that one left 5-years ago.  As such, HTR is going to be implementing the same decay factor that the category review threshold received back in 2021 to each of these variables in August '23 to make them more relevant and dynamic.

Who will be impacted?

Companies who have been idle on HTR without recent hotelier or partner recommendations, information requests, press mentions, etc. 

What can you do to mitigate the impact?

Make sure that your company has not been idle for more than 6-months on HTR with no recent content (ie. hotelier reviews, partner recommendations, case studies, lead requests, press releases, etc).  Please check your Reputation Report Card for more specific instructions and priorities for your company.

The HTScore Algorithm takes into account over a dozen variables which analyze and recalculate daily based on millions of unique data points.  The HT Score algorithm alone runs more than 3,000+ lines of code which is run daily which runs thousands of calculations that benchmark not only each product within a given category against other products in the respective category, but also over time (since many of the variables account for content freshness and time decay).  Not only does it run this for each product on the site, but for each variable for each product which takes a significant computing power to calculate.

Over the past several years not only has the algorithm become more complex, but simultaneously we have seen tons more products get listed on the site along with substantial growth in the content and data that the algorithm analyzes (ie. reviews, partner recommendations, integrations, etc).

As the HotelTechReport platform and data set has grown, computing the HT Score has become significantly more resource intensive to the point where it has begun impacting application performance.  

In order to increase app performance for Premium Members and site speed for hoteliers-- beginning on July 19, 2023 HotelTechReport will stop calculating an HTScore for products that do not have a trustworthy profile (aka. < than 25 cumulative all-time reviews) as a way to reduce the computational capacity required to run the HT Score.  Products without a trustworthy profile don't have sufficient feedback on the platform for the algorithm to effectively rank them so this was a natural fit to reduce the scope of the dataset that the HT Score analyzes.  

After the update goes live, any product with <25 reviews will show "unranked" on their profiles and default sort after ranked vendors by # of reviews across the site.  As soon as vendors achieve 25 reviews, they will receive a rank within 24-hours.

• Before: All products on the site were factored into the HT Score algorithm and received an HT Score
• After: Only products with a trustworthy profile (>25 reviews) will be factored into the HT Score algorithm.  Prior to a product obtaining 25-reviews, it will be marked on the site as 'unranked' and will not earn an HT Score

How does this improve the experience for hoteliers?

The purpose of this update is to help improve application performance and site speed as well as help hoteliers avoid viewing products as ranked that realistically don't have a trustworthy profile or sufficient data to be ranked effectively by the algorithm.  Products that don't have a trustworthy profile with at least 25-reviews will be clearly marked as 'unranked' so buyers know that there is not sufficient feedback to rank the product based on user feedback from hoteliers in the community.

How will this impact your company?

1. This will only impact companies who aren't engaged on Hotel Tech Report and who don't meet the minimum trustworthiness criteria on their profile
2. When the update goes live on July 19th, products with fewer than 25 reviews may notice a significant change in rank due to the algorithm removing their HT Score
3. Products without trustworthy profiles and who don't meet the minimum review volumes to earn an HT Score (<25 reviews) will not be ranked and this will show on their profiles and index pages as 'Not yet ranked'

How can I prevent any negative impact?

Just make sure you don't have any products with fewer than 25 verified reviews on the platform to make sure all of your product profiles are above the trustworthy profile threshold.  

Need help collecting reviews quickly? 

• Basic Members...check out our free guides.
• Premium Members...run an automated campaign

In July HTR will be adding a new variable to the HT Score called the trending score.  The purpose of the trending score is to help hoteliers identify products that are trending in the market which is measured by assessing the following questions...

1. Is your product trending with buyers? 👉 Metric: TTM price quote & demo inquiries
2. Is your product trending with customers? 👉 Metric: TTM 4+5 star reviews
3. Is your product trending with partners? 👉 Metric: TTM partner recommendations
4. Is your product trending in the news cycle? 👉 Metric: TTM posts (press releases, success stories and guest posts)

Each product on HTR is analyzed based on real time data in the platform along these four criteria to determine it's trending score within it's category to show which products are trending most in a given month.

Along with the rollout of the new Trending Score, we will be adding another new variable to the HT Score algorithm for Profile Completeness.

Ultimately profiles are only as valuable to users as the content that your team inputs which is why we are implementing this new variable to ensure that companies have added all of the content that buyers need to learn about each product to make more informed decisions.  

The profile completeness score will evaluate each profile along with pieces of key information that buyers look for which include: 

1. Capabilities.  Does the profile have at least 5 capabilities listed? (shown here)
2. Screenshots. Does the profile have at least 3 product screenshots? (shown here)
3. Pricing. Does the profile have pricing information? (shown here)
4. Features.  Has the company added the product's features? (shown here)
5. Profile Freshness. Has the profile been updated in the last quarter (90-days)?

As of this week we're rolling out redesigned sub-category pages.  These pages will serve as hubs for relevant content about each sub-category with new filters to help users move beyond a single top solution recommendation and instead help users identify the solution that is right for them.

Key changes: 

1. 🎯 Segment based recommendations & buyer personas
2. ⚙️ New data filters to give users the power to find the right fit
3. 📖 Unified content hub of helpful resources

🎯 Segment Based Recommendations & Buyer Personas

There is no best overall vendor in any given category nor has there ever been just as there is no single best hotel asset.  But to make comparisons amongst hotels asset managers and buyers use metrics like REVPAR and similarly HTR uses the HT Score.  

The reason for this is that popularity is not a strong indicator of fit (or it would just be a bigger is better competition).  Having said that, popularity does tend to be a strong indicator of fit when applying segmentation (ie. most popular for resorts, most popular in Europe, etc).  For example, an mobile ordering solution that is recommended by lots of resorts is more likely to be a good fit for a resort looking for mobile ordering than a vendor who is not recommended by other resorts.

For this reason we have created the new buyer personas that outline hotel types that tend to have unique attributes which lead them to make similar tech purchasing decisions.

At a glance users can now quickly see that there is no one size fits all solution but rather there are different tools that serve different types of properties with unique need.  

⚙️ New data filters to give users the power to find the right fit

The new data filters enable HTR to move beyond a single overall ranking and instead allow users to quickly refine the rankings based on their own criteria including hotel size, city, region, hotel type or even PMS.

📖 Unified Content Hub of Helpful Resources

The new category pages are jam packed with helpful resources for buyers giving them tons of free tools, resources and content all related to the category they are researching including: 

• Recommended articles
• Free report downloads
• Category buyers guide
• In-depth deep dive (overview, benefits, features, pricing, implementation and FAQs)
• Related categories