CHICAGO – (March 8, 2010) – Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) awarded the first ever Most Innovative Hospitality Award to MTech for their REX Room Expeditor product at its Members Meeting in Orlando on March 3.  HTNG also announced two runner-up awards – one to Intelity for their ICE product and the other to a company whose policy prohibits publicly disclosing them.  HTNG senior officers presented the awards at the 6th Annual Members’ Meeting of HTNG in Orlando Florida.

Hotel members selected the winners by voting for any of 24 contestants whose products covered a wide range of hospitality technologies and systems, including entertainment devices, guest services tools, meeting planning applications, room controls, and hotelier-developed in-house applications.

The winning technology from MTech, headquartered in nearby Miami Florida, is REX Room Expeditor.   “We were very excited when we heard that HTNG was giving hoteliers the opportunity to pick what new products are most innovative.” said Luis Segredo, President of MTech.  “Now, we are honored that the industry has recognized our efforts to advance guest service and housekeeping efficiency with REX by giving us this award.”

REX revolutionizes the housekeeping room assignment process by effectively changing how room attendants work.  They no longer receive a board with rooms to clean, but rather, on an iPod Touch, they are presented with their next room only (in their native language) -- the most important room to clean based on hotel defined criteria such as room rush, VIP status, room type, etc.  Proven in union environments and integrated to the PMS and energy management, REX saves a great deal of otherwise wasted effort and gets guests into rooms faster.  REX works in tandem with MTech’s award winning Hotel Service Optimization System (HotSOS).

The first runner-up technology from Intelity, called ICE, is a Property Automation Solution that controls up to five customizable, branded interfaces that allows hotel guests to arrange all services instantly via an in-room touch screen, laptop, lobby, TV or mobile device.  The completely integrated virtual solution and back-end monitoring system organizes, tracks and measures all hotel activity along with language preferences for effective use by all international consumers.  ICE was designed with a focus on the hotel operator’s needs and the ability to exceed guest service interaction, quality feedback and direct consumer marketing.

The voting was very close. The hotelier voting resulted in a three-way tie for the second runner-up.  HTNG applied the contest’s tie-breaker policy and selected the second runner-up by including votes from industry consultants. The two products that narrowly missed an Innovation Award were TransactionVault for Lodging™ from Merchant Link and Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensors from EnOcean Alliance. The other entrants for the award also included these products (in alphabetic order):

• AirWatch, Wandering WiFi
• BNS Touch w/The Wiz, Broadband Network Systems Ltd
• DS Assistant - Digital Signage for Hospitality , TAC
• FloodGate, VideoPropulsion
• GreenEngage, Intercontinental Hotels Group
• HD Event Video Conferencing, PSAV Presentation Services
• IHG Leaders Lounge, Intercontinental Hotels Group
• iMEDIA,  iBAHN
• Libra OnDemand, Libra OnDemand
• Link Balancer Appliance, Elfiq Networks
• MediaHub HD™, TeleAdapt
• Messenger Link™, Saflok, A Kaba Company
• OPERA Resort Dashboard, MICROS Systems Inc.
• PERFORM^SM with Price Optimization, Intercontinental Hotels Group
• PlanView.NET™, MeetingMatrix
• PowerWave Multi-Media Connectivity Panel, guestLINK™/cii
• RTConnect, eRevMax
• WISH.NET, Prologic First
• Vitrum - The Glass Collection, VDA Multimedia

The winner and runners-up will be able to display the award’s seal on product promotional information and packaging. Descriptions of the winner and 1st runner-up, including a PDF of each of the display boards used to determine the winners, are online at HTNG’s Innovation Award website: http://www.htng.org/innovation.

About Hotel Technology Next Generation
The premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry, HTNG is a self-funded, non-profit organization with members from hotel and hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, and other industry members including consultants, media, and academic experts.  HTNG’s members participate in focused workgroups to bring to
market open solution sets addressing specific business problems.   HTNG
fosters the selection and adoption of existing open standards.  Where necessary, it also develops new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality industry.

Membership in HTNG is open to hotel and hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, consultants, academics, press and others.   Currently, more than 400 corporate and individual members from across this spectrum, including most of the world’s leading hotel companies and technology vendors, are active HTNG participants. HTNG’s Board of Directors alone represents more than 2.3 million guest rooms – with the total rooms impacted by all of HTNG’s hotelier members surpassing 4.3 millions rooms worldwide. Workgroup proceedings, drafts, and specifications are published for all HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging rapid and broad adoption.  Specifications are released to the public domain as they are ratified by the workgroup.

For more information, visit www.htng.org.