Phase II: HT Score Poseidon Update is now live
Phase II of the Poseidon Algorthim update is now live. This means that the new rankings that were only vendor facing in the vendor dashboard in Phase I can now be viewed live on HTR throughout the entire site both the hotelier facing site as well as the vendor dashboard.
If you have any questions about the algorithm updates please refer to the scoring documentation or the Phase I announcement. If you're looking for personalized tips to improve your reputation, rankings and visibility--check out the Report Card and Coaching Checklist in your vendor dashboard.
Continued from Phase I: HT Score Poseidon Update
When does the 3rd and final phase of the update go live?
The final Phase III update (Client bias/Share of Voice variable) will be rolled out with the introduction of the Client Bias ranking signal no later than 11/1. Per the June 16th update for vendors to see in the dashboard but the weighting will go live after the end of the 2022 HotelTechAwards:
Client Bias (aka. Share of Voice). Hotel Tech Report’s policy has historically been to accept reviews from multiple users at a single hotel due to the fact that every user has a unique opinion/viewpoint on software. Having said that, collecting lots of reviews from only a handful of customers that aren't representative of your overall customer base indicates potential risk of bias.
What is the client bias update?
We’ll use two hypothetical vendors to illustrate the importance of this algorithm patch: Vendor A and Vendor B. Vendor A has 30 reviews from 30 hotels, Vendor B has 30 reviews from 1 hotel client.
In this example, you can see that while both vendors have the same # of reviews, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison when it comes to credibility and install base since Vendor A has 30 verified hotel clients and Vendor B has only 1.
The Share of Voice variable will help identify potential client selection bias (aka. cherry picking) that can arise if a vendor is strategically only asking for feedback from a select number of clients versus reaching out to their full install base.
Who will be impacted by the client bias update?
Most companies will not be impacted by this update. The only companies that will be impacted will be ones who have selectively sought to only seek feedback from lots of users at a small sample of client hotels.
*Note: You can still get a handful of reviews from a single property; however, if all of your reviews are coming from a small amount of properties the algorithm will identify this as potential cherry picking/gaming and your score will be impacted as a result
What can we do to maximize our score for the client bias update?
Just make sure you are reaching out organically for feedback to your client base instead of cherry picking select clients. Also, take note that while you may certainly collect a handful of reviews from different users at a given hotel--if your strategy has been to try to game the system and collect tons of reviews from a single hotel (or small number of hotels) this will be identified by the algorithm update and your score will be impacted. Hopefully it goes without saying but...make sure you're review collection is organic, representative and diverse and you are not trying to game the system by gathering lots of a reviews from only a few select clients.
