2023 HTA CONTEST RULES

No direct compensation for reviews. It is prohibited to offer direct incentives for reviews (e.g write a review, get a $X gift card). Only randomized giveaways are permitted (e.g. write a review and get entered to win a gift card).

**Charitable donations. Charitable donations in exchange for reviews are permitted. For example, a vendor may use language such as "For every review we collect between now and the end of the month, we will be donating $X to [charitable cause]."

Random giveaways may not exceed $1,000 in value. Randomized giveaways may not exceed a monetary value of $1,000 nor may they be given away at a rate in excess of 10% (1 in 10). Total giveaways to reviewers in a calendar year may not exceed $5,000 per company. Charitable contributions are exempt from the $1,000/month and $5,000/year caps.

All eligible giveaways must be 100% random. Any giveaway must be random and may in no way be influenced by the contents of a review such as but not limited to star ratings, positive sentiment, etc.

Nobody may enter a review for anyone except themselves. No associate (in house or consultant) may enter a review on behalf of a hotelier for any purposes. Your team may not assist a client with translations or type while the client dictates on the phone. You may not collect reviews on another channel and manually enter them either. These are a few examples but do not cover all banned cases. ALL reviews must be written by hoteliers with zero vendor influence, oversight or interference regardless of intent.

Vendors may not introduce bias when soliciting reviews. Vendors may not bias reviews such as but not limited to asking for a positive review or watching over the shoulder of a hotelier as they leave a review.

Vendors must have a standalone product (not a product module or add-on) in a given category in order to compete in that category in the awards and be eligible to win. In order for a product to compete in the HotelTechAwards it must be widely available and actively sold in market as a standalone product at both the beginning and end of the HotelTechAwards. If a module is found to be competing - it will be automatically pulled from the competition without refund and redesignated on the platform as as to more accurately reflect the positioning to hotel tech buyers.

All vendors agree to sportsmanlike conduct. You may not report another competitor without concrete evidence that they have breached the rules. There will be a 2-strike rule in place - vendors who file 2 reports without hard evidence will be disqualified themselves from the competition.

You agree that you and your team will be included in our violation report. HTR will make publicly available a blacklist report of the individuals and companies found attempting to write reviews on behalf of their clients and without exception will publish these names and companies to a location available to the entire vendor & hotelier community.

Common sense self regulation. Each competitor promises to uphold the highest standards of integrity and to not attempt gaining an unfair advantage by leveraging unethical tactics.

Ethics committee judgments. Each participating organization will nominate a member to the ethics committee that will review and decide on penalties associated with violations that are uncovered such as but not limited to: profile alert banners, review removal and disqualification from the competition.

Penalties. Standard penalties for infractions can be found here; however, HTR reserves the right to adjust penalties based on the findings from ethics committee peer reviews of infractions.