Our Fairness Commitment: How Listings Are Ordered

We built hocha.town to be a local guide, not extortionware. Listing is free, and nothing anyone pays buys truth, correction, or the right to leave.

What We Promise

Every business can exist on hocha.town — even without an account or subscription
Corrections and removal are always free — accuracy is a right, not a paid feature
Owner tools are free — your listing is never held hostage
No suppression of competitors — no tier can hide, block, or punish another business
No fees to list — gifts to the site are optional and never change how listings are ordered

How Listing Tiers Work

Unclaimed Listing (Free, Baseline Presence)

Every business may appear on hocha.town, even without an account. This ensures the directory remains open and complete.

Basic listing (name, category, general location)
Appears in search results and map views (non-priority)
Included in the Eat & Do lists on the website and in the apps (non-priority)
Information may be limited or auto-generated
No direct control over listing fields
No analytics, enhancements, or promotional placement

Claimed Listing — free

Every claimed listing gets exactly the same tools, at no cost. There is no higher tier to outbid you. Paid listing plans are no longer sold.

Claim and manage your listing
Edit and maintain all core details, hours, and contact info
Replace auto-generated information with owner-provided content
Photos, video, highlights, and owner notes
Digital guest guidebook with a public link you can share
Post events and push special offers to travelers
An Owner Verified badge, so visitors know the details come from you
Performance analytics — views, clicks, and where traffic comes from

What it does not give: a better position in search results, or a better rating. Search ignores payment. We also feature some places editorially. Those carry no label, because nobody paid for them.

What Is Always Free (All Businesses)

These actions never require a subscription:

Request factual corrections (hours, address, phone)
Request removal of a listing
Report inaccurate or harmful information
Verify permanent closure

Accuracy and removal are rights, not paid features.

How Listings Are Ordered

These are the rules the website and the apps follow. Two terms are used below.

Featured means one of two things: a place our editors picked, or a business on an older paid plan. Paid plans are no longer sold, so new owners cannot buy this placement, and it ends when an older plan does.
Sponsored means a featured listing that is on a paid plan. Wherever a sponsored listing is shown ahead of others because of its plan, it carries a Sponsored label. Editorial picks carry no label.

Listings run by the site owner. hocha.town is run by Frontier Consulting Group, LLC, which also runs local businesses. Those listings show the label “Operated by the site owner”. They are never featured or sponsored, even on a paid plan, and are ordered like any unpaid listing. Claiming a listing, or having it linked to an administrator account, gives no placement on its own.

Business list (category browse)

The default order, Featured, puts sponsored listings first, then other featured listings, then everyone else. Inside each group, the highest rating comes first.
The keyword box on this page filters the list and keeps the same order.
Sorting by rating or by name ignores payment and featured status, and no listing is labeled Sponsored.

Eat & Do (Plan a Trip page and the "nearby" section of guest guidebooks)

In each group, featured listings come first, then everyone else.
Inside each part, listings are ordered by rating weighted by the number of reviews, so a 5.0 from three reviews does not outrank a 4.7 from four hundred. Ties go A to Z.
The Plan a Trip page shows the first eight in each group. Guidebooks show the first three.

Restaurant and things-to-do guides

The restaurants guide and the things-to-do guide list featured listings first, then everyone else, by rating.
The live dining pages (open now, late night, breakfast, and the cuisine pages) list places A to Z or by opening hours. Payment plays no part there.

Homepage

Featured dining shows up to eight places to eat and drink. Featured places come first in a random order, then other places in a random order. The order is drawn again each time the page is rebuilt, at most once an hour.
Open now shows up to eight businesses that are open at that moment, picked at random from all of them. Payment and featured status play no part, so nothing there is labeled Sponsored.

Search

Site search (the search page and the homepage search box) orders results by how well the name, description, tags and details match your words. Payment and featured status play no part.
In the apps, search does the same under the default Relevance sort. If you choose Featured first, featured listings come first and sponsored ones are labeled.

Apps: Explore, Today and All dining

Each Explore row lists featured listings first. After that, on iPhone: listings with a photo, then listings open now, then rating, then name. On Android: listings with a photo, then rating, then number of reviews, then name.
Places to eat on the Today screen shows four: featured places first, then places open now, then the rest, each A to Z.
The All dining list shows featured listings first, then everyone else, A to Z.
Older app pages on this website (addresses starting with /native) follow the same rules. Their home screen draws four places to eat at random, where sponsored and featured places are four times as likely to be drawn.

Places to stay (map)

Cabins and vacation rentals come from a live Stay22 map of listings from booking platforms such as Vrbo, Booking.com and Expedia. hocha.town does not rank or feature cabins, and payment does not change where a cabin appears. We may earn a commission when someone books through the map.

Deals

The deals page lists every business with a current special offer, in a random order.

Events and job posts

An event or job posted from an account on a paid plan is marked featured. Featured events can be listed ahead of other events. The jobs page orders posts by date or pay, not by featured status.

Your Right to Leave

No Lock-In. No Penalties.

Request factual corrections — wrong hours, outdated details, bad photos — always free
Request removal anytime — email us and your listing is removed, no questions, no fees
You own your content — photos, descriptions, and details you submit remain yours
Owner tools are free — and ownership of your content never depends on payment

If You Have an Older Paid Plan

Your Listing and Your Tools Stay

Your listing remains on hocha.town — it is never removed or hidden
You keep owner tools, free: photos, video, events, offers, analytics and the guest guidebook
Only the Sponsored placement your plan included ends, when the plan does
Your photos, descriptions and other content stay up
No penalties or restrictions apply, and there is nothing to re-buy

This is a local guide, not extortion. We earn your business by being useful, not by holding your presence hostage.

Questions about fairness? We're happy to explain how anything works. Email us at info@hocha.town

Ready to claim your listing?

List it free and take control of how your business appears on hocha.town.

Get Listed

This fairness-first approach is core to Frontier Consulting Group, LLC, the team that built and operates hocha.town.

Learn more about Frontier Consulting Group