1. What is a partner recommendation?
We're constantly looking for new ways to generate deeper knowledge and insights for hoteliers to add more value and make it even easier to discover and adopt the best products to run and grow their hotel businesses.
And who knows about hotel tech products better than...vendors! Tech vendors have deep knowledge of the inner workings of their partners' products and companies, but they also get first hand unbiased feedback from their own clients about their partners making their expertise, knowledge and experience invaluable which is why HTR rolled out partner recommendations.
A partner recommendation is similar to a hotelier review but instead of only hoteliers being able to leave feedback about your products and services, now your vendor partners can too.
Vendors can now invite their partners to leave a recommendation for their product which gets added to their profile. Partner recommendations don't count as reviews but they are factored in as one of the quality signal bonus variables in the HT Score.
2. What are the reasons why a partner recommendation might get rejected?
Partner recommendations can get rejected for a few reasons. The majority of recommendations are rejected for one of 4 reasons:
Partner doesn't click verification link in their email
Partner doesn't demonstrate knowledge of product
Partner has a direct financial interest in the success of the business (e.g. investor, reseller)
Recommendation is left by a hotelier rather than a partner. Hotelier are not eligible for recommendations and must leave hotelier reviews.
Partner does not demonstrate knowledge, experience or expertise in the hotel industry.
Partner leaves generic feedback such as 'try the product' or 'they are good to work with'...all recommendations must be specific and show knowledge.
Content issue examples: (1) if content is copy/pasted into 2 fields the recommendation will be rejected. (2) if the content does not give advice for buyers or demonstrate clear expertise/product knowledge it will be rejected (3) if the content simply thanks the partner for a partnership it will be rejected. Recommender must follow prompt instructions and provide valuable guidance for buyers in order to be published.
Believe a recommendation was rejected wrongfully? Request an investigation below (premium members only).
3. How do I get recommendations from partners?
Its simple, just have your business development, integrations or C-suite team members send out your recommendation link to your partners and ask them to leave a recommendation (tip: leave them a recommendation first and they'll be more likely to give you one back!)
4. Where will my recommendations show up on my profile?
When partner vendors leave you a recommendation, it will go through a similar verification flow to hotelier reviews. After 48-hours if the recommendation passes verification you will receive a notification email and the recommendation will appear on your profile.
5. Is it possible to get an old recommendation updated?
If you have a partner who left a recommendation a long time ago and it has stopped counting towards your score and you want to get it updated without them having to leave an entirely new recommendation, you can use the 1-click partner update feature shown below:
NOTE: The 'request update' button will only appear for reviews that are more than one year old. You can also only send one update request every 2-weeks so once you send a request the update button will disappear for 2-weeks (to ensure that users can't get spammed with multiple update requests). If you're not sure when the last update request was sent to a user, you can expand the detail slide out for a given partner recommendation to find out (shown here)