How the Fund works, in full.

The Hotel Tech Fix Fund is an internal contractual budget commitment of the operator to allocate 50% of every confirmed eligible pre-tax placement fee to funding a selected hotel technology challenge.

The Fund is not an escrow, a trust, client money, a segregated account, a charity, a donation scheme, a prize pool held on behalf of third parties, or any regulated financial product. No hotel, supporter, vendor or member of the public acquires ownership of, a claim on, or a security interest in the Fund or in any amount displayed as its balance. The displayed balance is an accounting figure, not money held for anyone.

The Fund figure is a gross budget. Any applicable indirect tax, withholding, bank charge, payment-processing cost or currency conversion cost incurred in spending the budget is met out of that budget. No specific net amount is guaranteed to any recipient or supplier.

Submitting a challenge and supporting a challenge are free and always will be. No purchase, payment, placement or commercial relationship is required, and none confers any advantage.

There is no lottery, raffle, prize draw, sweepstake or any other element of chance, no jury and no editorial selection. The outcome is determined only by verified support counts and the published tie-break order in clause 08.

Independent hotels and small hotel groups worldwide operating between 1 and 5 properties. A submission must be made by a person who works at the property and can speak for it, from a verifiable work email address on the property's own domain or an equivalent professional address. Free consumer email addresses are not accepted.

Hotel technology vendors, suppliers, consultancies and agencies may not submit or support, whether directly or through a related person.

A challenge only becomes public after the submitter verifies their work email. Support is recorded only after the supporter verifies their own work email. One verified work email may support any given challenge at most once, and the same person may support several different challenges. Duplicates, unverified records and disqualified records count as zero.

The period opens 24 August 2026 at 09:00 (Europe/Madrid). New support closes 15 November 2026 at 18:00 (Europe/Madrid). Support created inside the window may complete its email verification during a 30-minute grace period ending 15 November 2026 at 18:30 (Europe/Madrid); nothing is counted after that.

After the verification grace period ends, eligible challenges are ranked by verified support count. The eligible challenge with the highest verified support count is the selected challenge. There is no shortlist, no second vote, no reset of counts and no discretionary operator choice.

The result is provisional only while reasonable eligibility and fraud verification is completed.

The selected challenge is determined in November, but the Fund continues to accrue from confirmed eligible pre-tax placement fees until the season closes 15 December 2026 at 23:59 (Europe/Madrid). The final maximum gross allocation is therefore only confirmed after the season closes. Paid placement rounds and their timings are unaffected by challenge selection.

Between selection and season close the operator may verify eligibility and the hotel connection, request legal and tax documentation, discuss the technology problem, review supplier options, obtain quotations or proformas, and prepare the Award Agreement. No Fund money is released before the required documentation is provided and the Award Agreement is signed.

If two or more eligible challenges are tied, the order is determined as follows:

• higher number of verified supports;
• then the challenge whose submitter email verification (and therefore publication) happened earlier.

No tie is ever resolved by chance, by draw or by unrestricted operator choice.

The operator may disqualify a submission, a support or a challenge where there is evidence of coordinated support, purchased support, disposable or generated email addresses, vendor involvement, misrepresentation of the property, or any other manipulation.

If the top-ranked challenge is ineligible, fraudulent, withdraws, cannot be verified, does not sign the Award Agreement within 30 days, or is unable to receive the funding lawfully, the place passes objectively to the next eligible challenge in the verified-support ranking, then the next, and so on. It is never reassigned at large.

Eligible expenditure is limited to solving the selected challenge, and may include:

• software licences, subscriptions and implementation fees;
• integration, migration, configuration and development work;
• hardware strictly required to deliver the solution;
• training and onboarding directly related to the solution;
• third-party professional services required to deliver the solution.

Not eligible: salaries and general staffing, marketing, general renovation, refinancing, debt, cash payouts, or anything unrelated to the challenge. There is no cash alternative and the Fund is never paid out as unrestricted money.

The default is that the operator pays approved suppliers directly against valid invoices addressed to the operator. Reimbursement of a hotel that has already paid a supplier is possible only at the operator's discretion, only against full supporting documentation, and only where the expenditure was pre-approved in writing. Reimbursement is a payment method, not an entitlement, and does not convert the Fund into cash owed to the hotel.

Indirect tax (VAT/IVA or equivalent) applicable to supplier invoices is met from the budget. Where any payment is subject to withholding tax or a payment-on-account obligation, that amount is applied and the budget available is reduced accordingly.

Any tax consequence for the hotel is the hotel's own responsibility. The operator gives no tax advice and no assurance that funding is tax-free or tax-neutral in any jurisdiction.

Before any money is spent, the selected hotel signs a short Award Agreement covering:

• identification of the hotel and the authorised signatory;
• the agreed scope of work and the approved supplier or suppliers;
• the approved budget and that it is a gross, capped amount;
• direct-payment terms and any pre-approved reimbursement;
• confirmation of eligibility and absence of vendor involvement;
• tax responsibility and required documentation;
• a completion timeline and reporting;
• publication of the outcome, and termination for breach or misrepresentation.

Legal name and address of the hotel entity, tax identification number, evidence of authority of the signatory, supplier invoices addressed as instructed, and any withholding or exemption certificate applicable in the hotel's jurisdiction. Funding cannot proceed without this documentation.

If the selected beneficiary cannot use all or part of the allocated Fund within the Award Agreement period — the scope costs less, the project is abandoned, or documentation is not produced — the remaining eligible balance may pass to the next eligible challenge in the final verified-support ranking for the same purpose, and objectively onwards through that ranking while eligible challenges remain, usable balance remains, and the long-stop has not expired.

If no eligible challenge has spent the balance within six months of the final determination of the season Fund, that balance is carried into the next season's Hotel Tech Fix Fund. It is never converted into cash for any hotel, never returned to any vendor, and never allocated by arbitrary operator selection.

Funding is not provided where it would breach applicable sanctions, export controls, anti-money-laundering rules or any other law, or where the operator cannot lawfully make the payment. In that case the place passes to the next eligible challenge under clause 09.

These rules may be updated; the version applying to a submission or support is the version recorded at the moment it was made. The current version is 2026-08-22.2. Operator: Miguel Signes Perelló. Contact: legal@hoteltech.lol.