Booking a hotel without checking TripAdvisor feels reckless. Yet every week, hotel owners and operators sign multi-year software contracts with vendors that have little or no consistent recent public customer feedback. In 2025, that’s a red flag.
The hotel tech marketplace is crowded: PMS, RMS, guest messaging, POS, housekeeping automation—the list goes on. With technology now at the core of guest experience and operational efficiency, the stakes of making the wrong choice are high. Reviews have become the first filter of trust, and their absence speaks volumes.
The New Hotel Tech Buyer Journey
Today’s hotel technology buyers are self-directed and risk-averse. According to Forrester, more than 90% of B2B buyers trust peers in their industry more than vendor content. Analyst reports, once the north star of enterprise decisions, are losing relevance: only 14% of buyers now consult them—a 60% drop from the previous year.
Instead, buyers turn to peer validation. In fact, more than three-quarters of enterprise software buyers globally say they check reviews before making a decision. As Ian Bruce, VP at Forrester, puts it: “Risk and trust loom large in the minds of B2B buyers… Trust is the remedy to risk.”
For hoteliers, that trust is increasingly built through platforms like HotelTechReport, which recently surpassed 60,000 authentic product reviews across PMS, RMS, CRM, and guest-facing solutions. As Mews founder Richard Valtr put it: “HTR has been a breath of fresh air in this industry, making it a counterpart to TripAdvisor on the hotel tech side.”
Lack of Reviews = Perceived Risk
In an industry where technology contracts often last years, buyers see no reviews as a warning signal. Forrester data shows that B2B buyers who lack peer validation often delay or abandon deals. In hospitality, where technology directly impacts guest satisfaction and profitability, risk perception is amplified.
Accor CTO Floor Bleeker notes: “HotelTechReport is a great place for hoteliers like us to find up-to-date independent reviews and resources about our crowded solutions landscape.” If a vendor doesn’t appear in that landscape, it raises doubts. Are they too new? Have they failed to scale? Or worse, are they hiding poor customer experiences?
Reviews as the Tiebreaker
Even when vendors make it to a hotelier’s shortlist, reviews play a decisive role. Hoteliers increasingly check review sites immediately before demos or trials, using peer insights as the final tiebreaker between two or three close contenders.
This is where HotelTechReport’s dynamic shortlists and PMS Finder tool prove invaluable. By allowing hoteliers to filter software options based on property size, location, and integrations, and then layer in verified customer reviews, HTR enables apples-to-apples comparisons at the exact moment decisions are being made.
As Canary Technologies’ VP of Strategic Initiatives Bryan Michalis put it: “HTR is the leading hotel tech platform because of its multi-faceted and transparent approach. Thought leadership, product reviews, awards, news, announcements—all under one roof.”
Peer Reviews vs Analyst Reports
The balance of influence has shifted. Analyst reports still have a role, but their authority has eroded as buyers prefer peer validation. According to Forrester, buyers that trust a supplier are twice as likely to recommend them or pay a premium. That kind of trust is rarely built by a polished sales deck—it comes from the authentic voices of peers.
HotelTechReport’s proprietary HTScore™ ranking methodology has emerged as the gold standard for hotel software benchmarking. Unlike analyst quadrants or vendor self-claims, HTScore blends millions of data points: review quality and recency, partner ecosystem strength, customer centricity, and company reach. For hoteliers, this offers a transparent, real-time benchmark of how vendors perform in the field—not just on paper.
Why Vendors Must Embrace Reviews
For hotel technology providers, reviews are no longer optional—they’re revenue drivers. Vendors with robust review profiles consistently see higher conversion rates, stronger brand credibility, and faster sales cycles. Thibault Catala, founder of Catala Consulting, highlights: “HotelTechReport has been instrumental in providing an enriched perspective of the hotel technology market. It offers valuable insights, detailed reviews, and industry trends, all of which have broadened our understanding and shaped our strategy in this space.”
Reviews don’t just influence buyers—they attract them. HotelTechReport’s one-click quote requests, verified case studies, and free buyer’s guides turn reviews into action, moving hoteliers from research into purchase. This creates a flywheel: more reviews fuel more conversions, which fuel more reviews.
As Jordan Hollander, CEO of HotelTechReport, explains: “Software is never a one-size-fits-all. Our 60,000+ verified user reviews combined with proprietary data points like feature lists and integrations are what enable our platform to make personalized recommendations for hoteliers at scale.”
Conclusion: Reviews Are the Minimum Bar for Trust
In 2025, online reviews aren’t an optional resource—they’re the baseline expectation. A hotel software vendor without reviews is like a property with no TripAdvisor listing: invisible at best, suspicious at worst.
Platforms like HotelTechReport, with its 60,000 verified reviews and personalized buyer tools, have become the industry’s trust infrastructure. They empower hoteliers to de-risk decisions, save time, and ultimately make more confident, fiduciary-responsible investments in their tech stack.
For hotel owners and operators, the message is clear: if you don’t see a healthy cadence of recent positive reviews, don’t sign.
