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Could Have Played Out Quite Differently |
By Brian Cunningham, January 4, 2007
This past fall I was at Eye4Travel where I spent part of my time doing an informal survey to gage the depth of participation in HTNG by hoteliers and vendors. I was also looking to identify the drivers that motivate vendors and operators to invest their time and money in HTNG. This exercise was not just idle curiosity on my part. Over the past few months I have been promoting a technology joint venture with some similar �for the greater good� concepts. Enthusiasm for these concepts was surprisingly high and yet, buy-in has been disappointingly slow. I was looking to better understand why HTNG has done so well. The joint venture proposed having a small number of leading distribution vendors and brand Management Company�s work together to develop technologies enabling central reservations and multi-channel distribution of resort centric activities. Picture ALL of the ski, golf, spa, balloon ride, backcountry and other activities offered by resorts and independent operators in Vail Colorado. Now picture real time, demand driven rate and availability management for all those activities being accessible from a single exposed web service and you will understand the value proposition. Thanks in part to HTNG standards, the project is now technically quite feasible. The proposal summary has been distributed widely; deep dive presentations were made to a number of high-level industry executives. I found understanding of the value proposition to be immediate. It was clear that most understood that their respective slices of the joint venture pie would have far more fruit in it than would be likely should they cook up their own proprietary version of the solution. Here is where the moral of the story comes in. Granted the comparison between this project and HTNG is a long stretch and probably more akin to the original THISCO (Pegasus) joint venture but still, why the lack of buy-in? A number of reasons were given but the one nearly universal response from both the vendors and operators was that they did not want to work that closely with their competitors. Point being, this could easily have been the fate of HTNG. So what did I find with my poll? First and most encouragingly, there was not a single individual whose company was not already involved with HTNG or did not have immediate plans to become involved. Clearly it has become accepted wisdom in our space that HTNG participation is good for business. Participation by smaller vendors is something of a no-brainer but many of the established vendors have real disincentives to involvement. Many have significant, high margin revenue streams derived from their portfolio of proprietary interfaces. Also, the committee meeting formats put innovative young companies on an equal footing with visibility and a voice equal to the established vendors. Also, it is interesting to note that solutions derived from HTNG can lower barriers to entry for these smaller companies. When I asked individuals why their companies participate, the three most cited reasons were:
Doug also articulated the �industry need� well by saying �Vendors needed a forum to learn what hotel companies � as a group � needed, and hotel companies needed a forum where they could understand what the vendor community�s constraints were. HTNG created a meeting place where hotel technologists and vendors could get together in a neutral setting, outside the selling environment, to identify needs and possibilities, and to get vendors excited about building new technologies. He continued with �I think the lack of mutual understanding was illustrated at our European conference, when one of the hoteliers asked two questions of the audience (which included about 35 senior hotel technology executives, 90 senior vendor executives, and 25 others) two questions. First, �how many vendors in the audience think they provide good service to hotels� (most of the vendor hands go up). Second, �how many hoteliers in the audience think they get good service from vendors� (not a single hand goes up). This is indicative of a huge communication gap, which HTNG was designed to fill. In a discussion with John Burns, an active member\founder of HTNG, he made the point about a good charter and excellent organization best by saying �Every effort such as this faces the danger of becoming an academic exercise rather than a force promoting and achieving progressive change. From the outset, HTNG committed to proposing changes that would be adoptable, and promptly adopted. They achieved this by involving representatives of both the user and vendor communities, by identifying achievable, bite-sized deliverables, and by creating tightly-focused work groups that kept discussion on topic. Their success was furthered by their repeated stated position that the hotel community must include adherence to HTNG standards as mandatory in its RFPs and by pushing vendors to reflect HTNG standards in their next generation developments. They had the vision to get things started it is the brand participation that has kept it going.� John also made another excellent observation �Equally � and possibly even more important � has been the vision, energy, focus and determination brought to the Executive Director position by Doug Rice. His participation, more than any other single factor, has led to the success of HTNG.� Having attended a couple of committee meetings managed by Doug, I couldn�t agree with John more. Jon Inge, another founder of HTNG had his own list of three reasons why the organization has gained traction.
In the end, motives do not really matter, hoteliers are or will soon
be getting better technology solutions. The program is a success.
Brian Cunningham is a principal in ActivityTec, a Technology, Revenue Management and Distribution Best Practices Consultancy to Resort Centric Activity Providers |
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